Siltronic AG
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Earnings Call Transcript

Earnings Call Transcript
2018-Q1

from 0
P
Petra Muller
Director of Investor Relations & Communications

Thank you, operator. Welcome everybody to Siltronic's presentation of the Q1 2018 results. Christoph von Plotho, our CEO; and Rainer Irle, our CFO are with me today, and to comment on the market development, our financial figures and will be available afterwards for the Q&A. Please note that our presentation contains the usual Safe Harbor statement and applies throughout the call and this presentation. Today, we are published all documents relating to the Q1 reporting. They are available at our website. And now, I would like to turn over the call to Chris for opening remarks.

C
Christoph von Plotho
Chairman of Executive Board & CEO

Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen. After a positive financial year 2017, we were able to continue this development in 2018 and recorded the strong first quarter. Wafer demand continues to be very strong. Both memory and logic but also automotive and industrial applications contribute. The upward price trend for wafers continued in the first quarter 2018. Despite some headwinds from the U.S. dollar, Q1 sales came in at EUR 327 million, basically on the same level as Q4 2017. Main reason is the positive ASP development while wafer area sold was relatively stable. Our EBITDA reached EUR 122 million and our EBITDA margin was 37%. EBIT came in at EUR 97 million and ROCE was 49%. The net profit for the period improved and came in at EUR 82 million. Our net cash flow reached EUR 112 million. We recorded net financial assets of EUR 491 million, which so far represents an all-time high for Siltronic. The other half successful business development, we were able to pay out our first dividend for the financial year 2017, which amounted to EUR 2.50 per share. Wafer demand is still on an all-time high and exceeding supply. Some customers already talked about missed wafer starts. By now, we're fully loaded across all diameters. Overall, the wafer market was about 6.6 billion square centimeters per month in Q1. Due to the continuous supply demand in balance[indiscernible] we were able to negotiate further price increases for Q2 and expect to see further increases throughout the remainder of the year. However, as expected, price increases somehow slowed down compared to 2017. External data seemed to indicate that's Siltronic ASP is, in many cases, above market average. For this first overview, I would like to hand over to Rainer for a detailed presentation of our Q1 financials.

R
Rainer Irle

Thanks, Chris, and welcome everybody. The 6 [indiscernible] sales development. Sales was about stable compared to Q4. This is in a way surprising as the U.S. dollar went in weaker from $1.18 to $1.23. Also Q1 has 2 days less than Q4. Those 2 effects have a combined negative effect of about EUR 20 million on sales. Fortunately, prices went up further and volumes remained strong, but same sales came in stable quarter-over-quarter. Cost for wafer area came further down and gross margin in Q1 2018 reached 38%.Based on higher ASP also drove the positive development of our EBITDA and EBITDA margin. EBITDA at EUR 122 million in Q1 2018 came in under high Q4 2017 level. The EBITDA margin was stable at about 37%. Compared to Q1 last year, EBITDA was up more than 100%, and EBITDA margin increased 121% to 37%. EBIT increased from EUR 91 million in Q4 to EUR 97 million in Q1 due to lower depreciation.Page 8. The steady increase of the net profit in 2017 continued in Q1 2018. Our net profit came in at EUR 82 million, after EUR 74 million in Q4 and EUR 17 million in Q1 2017. While Q1 '17 was burdened with EUR 4.5 million of hedging expenses, we had a positive hedging income of EUR 2.7 million in Q1 2018. Income tax expense in Q1 2018 was EUR 12.3 million. Let me quickly explain the change in accounting policy.As long as Siltronic still had tax losses carried forward, we did not book any deferred tax assets in Siltronic AG. This changed in Q1. During Q1, all remaining tax losses carried forward were utilized and Siltronic AG from now on pays statutory tax rate in Germany. Consequently, we change the accounting policy for the DTAs. This resulted in a one-time deferred tax income of EUR 6 million in Q1. And therefore the tax rate was only 13% in Q1. Going forward though, we expect the tax rate as guided of 15% to 20% for 2018. Page 9. Our equity ratio remained stable at 50%. Equity rose to EUR 707 million in the first quarter of 2018. On the increase of EUR 69 million, it's mainly due to the profit for the period of EUR 82 million. Our net financial assets improved in line with a net cash flow and increased to EUR 491 million.On the liability side, net current liabilities rose to EUR 492 million, as of March 31, 2018. There are 2 main reasons for this. First, customer prepayments increased to EUR 107 million. Second, slightly lower interest rates in the evaluation of [ tangent ] provisions in Germany. I would like to point out 2 new line items on our balance sheet. Both relate to changes in IFRS-15 accounting standards. We saw 18 million contract assets. Contract assets are basically inventories located at customers' premises.We have to show current and noncurrent contract liabilities of EUR 107 million. Contract liabilities are prepayments. Last year, prepayments were included in other nonfinancial liabilities. Page 10. In Q1 2018, interest rates in Germany went down slightly, while the interest rates in the U.S. increased. As a result, our pension provision slightly increased from EUR 367 million at the end of last year to EUR 381 million at the end of March 2018.Page 11. Based on our positive business development, net financial assets reached EUR 491 million, which represents an all-time high. As Chris already pointed out, we just returned EUR 75 million of those to our shareholders a few days ago.Page 12. Our 2018 CapEx will return at EUR 40 million (sic) [ EUR 240 ] to EUR 260 million. Some EUR 80 million will be base CapEx to sustain business and around EUR 110 million will be for the non-70k capacity addition. Another EUR 50 million to EUR 70 million will be for a new crystal pulling hall in Singapore.So far, we have made payments for property plans and equipment and the intangible assets amounting to EUR 25 million, which relate to the further automation of our production and to capacity expansions coming online in 2019. As usual, CapEx was low in the first quarter of the year.Page 14 (sic) [ 13 ]. Net cash flow increased to EUR 112 million in Q1. This strong development is mainly due to our strong net profit for the period. Prepayments from customer totaled EUR 41 million in Q1. Furthermore, we expect additional prepayments throughout the remainder of 2018. CapEx in the reporting period was EUR 33 million.And with that, I would like to hand over to Chris again.

C
Christoph von Plotho
Chairman of Executive Board & CEO

Thank you, Rainer. Our outlook for 2018 remains to be very positive and we therefore confirm the outlook published with the annual report at the beginning of March. We expect sales to be clearly above EUR 1.3 billion and EBITDA margin to be close to 40%. Due to the weak U.S. dollar versus the euro, we continue to expect the negative foreign exchange impact on sales of around EUR 100 million, and of around EUR 60 million on EBITDA. Our net cash flow should be clearly higher than the one of 2017.Our tax rate will be between 15% and 20% and the R&D expenses will be approximately 5% of revenue. Our CapEx will increase to EUR 240 million to EUR 260 million, most of which will be used for capacity expansions. Please be reminded that we already sold 100% of our 2019 and 2020 capacity expansions and LTAs. Our earnings per share will develop positively and be significantly higher than in 2017.With this, we close our presentation and are now available for your questions. Operator, please open the Q&A session.

Operator

The first question is from Amit Harchandani of Citigroup.

A
Amit B. Harchandani
Vice President and Analyst

Amit Harchandani from Citi. Three, if I may. My first question really relates to the demand across the end markets that you talked about and, in particular, if there are updated data points you could share with us. Around the memory market, some concerns in particular on the NAND side of things. So that would be my first question. My second question relates to pricing. I think you've previously talked about low double-digit pricing on average this year versus last year, almost up to about 20% by Q4 year-on-year increase. So any incremental clarity or quantification would be helpful. And the last question is with respect to supply. You talked about 2020 supply being sold out 100%. Could you give us a perspective on what you see is the likely supply coming online in the industry in 2020? And at what stage would you be willing to disclose the quantity that you plan to add in 2020?

C
Christoph von Plotho
Chairman of Executive Board & CEO

Well thank you for a question, Amit. Let me first try to answer your first question. It was related to demand by end application. Like I said in my presentation, we see strong demand from memory side, both DRAM and NAND. And we also see strong contributions coming from logic, automotive and industrial applications. We do not see weaknesses demand-wise in any end application. Regarding prices, I think Rainer explained to you very well how you should look at Q1 compared to Q4, when it comes up to pricing. We saw price increase in Q1. We said that we saw another price increase around in Q2, and we also said that we will see some more for the rest of the year. A part of that I do not want to add any other comments compared to the comments I made in the last call that we had. Regarding 2020, when we announced the capacity expansion by 70k, we said that this quantity, which will become fully available mid-'19, this [ carveout ] with 2 additional ATAs, and afterwards, we said that we signed another significant contract for further extensions, which will come onstream, like I said, in 2020, but we do not disclose the quantity.And regarding what is coming onstream, you know we do not know better than anybody else in the market. So the most precise think that we have is the 110k, which was announced in August 2017 by SUMCO. Then of course we know our figure. We are pretty sure that Shin-Etsu did or will do something comparable to SUMCO. And Siltron, they published figures that they spend a lot of money in 2018. But according to what we see in the market, we have doubts that this will translate directly into additional quantities available in 2019.

Operator

The next question is from Achal Sultania of Crédit Suisse.

A
Achal Sultania
Director

Just one clarification on the FX impact. I think Rainer, you mentioned there was a EUR 20 million revenue headwind in Q1, which is a combination of FX and lesser number of days in Q1. So I'm just wondering, the impact in Q1 should have been the highest. You are still talking about EUR 100 million revenue headwind for the year. So just trying to understand am I missing anything here?

R
Rainer Irle

Yes. The EUR 20 million that I mentioned in Q1 probably have FX enough due to the fewer days. That is compared to Q4, right? And Q4 was EUR 1.18 and Q1 was EUR 1.23. If you do the year-over-year, then the average of last year, the exchange rate was 1.13.

A
Achal Sultania
Director

Right. That was quarter-on-quarter. And so one thing on gross margin. So if you look at your revenues were -- so you basically mentioned your revenues were flattish. And your gross margins improved by about 1 percentage points sequentially. So that was again predominantly driven by pricing, but they would have been some FX headwinds because of that. So can you help us understand the moving parts in the gross margins?

R
Rainer Irle

So obviously, FX have a significant impact on gross margin. On the other side, prices went up and costs per wafer area went down slightly. And altogether, gross margins are up a little bit.

A
Achal Sultania
Director

Right. And one question for Chris. Chris, I think you mentioned that -- volume-wise you mentioned that industry volumes grew about 4% sequentially. And if I'm not wrong, I think you mentioned that Siltronic volumes were broadly flat quarter-on-quarter. Was that, right? Or ...

C
Christoph von Plotho
Chairman of Executive Board & CEO

We do not really look at quarter-to-quarter, because we have these effects at quarters, have different number of days. We said for the whole year, we will have a low single-digit contribution coming out of quantity. And we refer to the 4.5%, which IHS made public later last year for supply increase in 2018. We do believe that this 4.5% is limited by supply, and the demand, on the other hand, would be even higher.

A
Achal Sultania
Director

So that's my point, like -- how are -- how is the industry meeting the demand? Because clearly, you were saying that Infonetics is saying 4% to 5 -- sorry, IHS is saying 4% to 5% growth. In Q1, we saw 8% year-over-year growth. Clearly demand remains strong, memory, automotive, logic, industrial, all these parts remain strong. So -- like at some point, we need -- like, the industry needs to meet that demand. So is there -- can you do enough debottlenecking projects in the near term? You and your peers that will basically meet that demand, at least for this year is met. And then in 2019, we can actually see more capacity additions to come online.

C
Christoph von Plotho
Chairman of Executive Board & CEO

Well, it's a very good question and the answer is not easy to find. What real demand is when you have limited supply is very, very difficult to find out. But what we know is that the inventory level of our customers for raw materials went down during the year 2017. And like I said, we heard from first customers that they missed wafer starts. And I know that Siltronic is doing everything we can to maximize output. We run the company in-house in 6 quarters under max output, and I'm pretty sure that competitors do something comparable.

Operator

The next question is from Rob Sanders of Deutsche Bank.

R
Robert Duncan Cobban Sanders
Director

Just a question on capacity expansion. If I look at what PVA has booked in orders, looks like they're going to have another 24 pillars shipping to you guys from mid-2019 onwards. So it looks like you're going to be adding another 70k per year and 300 millimeters in 20 -- from mid-2019 to mid-2021. So why shouldn't we put that into a model here? I know you're not disclosing but it sounds like the capacity addition that you're doing in mid-'19 is going to continue in mid-'20 and mid-'21. So why shouldn't we put that in our model? And I've got a follow-up.

C
Christoph von Plotho
Chairman of Executive Board & CEO

Well on our last call, we mentioned that when we look at capacity, shelf capacity, we need to differentiate whether we talk about wafering shelf capacity or ingot shelf capacity and we said, that our ingot shelf capacity is below the wafering shelf capacity. And therefore, we announced to invest in additional growing hall in Singapore in order to match the capacity of ingot shelf and wafering shelf.

R
Robert Duncan Cobban Sanders
Director

But you said earlier that you had booked prepayments for capacity additions in May 20. So it sounds like if that trend continues, you're going to get more prepayments for further out into mid-2021, right? I mean, if that's the trend, is there any reason why I shouldn't think like that?

C
Christoph von Plotho
Chairman of Executive Board & CEO

No, we cannot help when our supplier talks about quantities that we buy. We had a good reason why we didn't disclose the 24, because there is -- some of that is capacity extension and some is replacing all their equipment to work with the state-of-the-art equipment. And therefore, we didn't want to disclose the figure because the risk is far too high that somebody translated 100% incapacity, which would be wrong.

R
Robert Duncan Cobban Sanders
Director

Got it. And my second question would just be on 150-millimeters and 200-millimeter. It seems like demand is still very strong for those companies in that space. So how do think about price rises for the older diameter wafers? Because I think the numbers you tend to give, I assume, related to 300-millimeter only. But how do you see the price rises for those older diameter wafers this year?

C
Christoph von Plotho
Chairman of Executive Board & CEO

I really had difficulties to understand your question. I think it was related to smaller diameters, which is 150 and 200. You know we are pretty low that, of course, we try to find bottlenecks and fix them. But we will not add capacity. We don't have capacity expansion projects while investing money. The reason is also that the locations that we have for wavering, 200-millimeter, one in North America, one in Singapore. And for 150 and smaller in Germany. The buildings are fully equipped, and therefore, we look for additional price increases.

R
Robert Duncan Cobban Sanders
Director

So that was my question, sorry. Just to be clear, I was talking about the price rises for the smaller diameters, 150, 200, not so much the capacity. How do -- if it's 20% in Q4 '18 and 300, then can we imagine a similar price rise in 200? Is that realistic?

C
Christoph von Plotho
Chairman of Executive Board & CEO

We don't disclose price increases by diameter.

Operator

The next question is from Jürgen Wagner with MainFirst.

J
Jürgen Wagner
Director

You mentioned you have prepayments in Q1 went up. From which customer groups are those mainly coming from? And are those the same that entered these long-term agreements for '19 and 2020? And the second question is, you -- in answering one of the previous questions you said that your production costs per wafer have also slightly decreased. Where are these reductions coming from? And what should be model going forward?

C
Christoph von Plotho
Chairman of Executive Board & CEO

Okay. So prepayments, yes. We said we already have received some prepayments in Q1, and we will receive additional prepayments throughout the year. And those all relate to the capacity extensions we will do in 2019 and beyond. Wafer costs were down slightly. I mean, biggest driver being productivity improvements and supply cost. That will continue going forward. But we also said, on the other hand, we see increasing electricity cost and also higher labor cost and we didn't disclose an exact number on how much savings we will achieve throughout the year.

J
Jürgen Wagner
Director

But -- if the labor costs and the electricity goes up then the material costs come down -- a bit more significant, right?

C
Christoph von Plotho
Chairman of Executive Board & CEO

Yes. As a fact, the productivity is improving. On the other side, cost per portion is going up. Electricity costs are going up. We see also some increases in mature cost pricing, but then on the other hand we do a lot of projects where we already reduced the consumption of materials or recycled. So in the end, a lot of that will be a wash.

Operator

The next question is from Peter Testa of One Investments.

P
Peter Testa

Just a couple of questions, please. On the FX in the quarter, are you able to highlight what the P&L impact of the FX was at EBIT level or pretax level? Just so we have a number compared to Q4. Then on the prepayment and the capacity cover that you're taking, can you get some sort of view as to how the coverage of forward capacity with these prepayments has changed over the past 3, 6 months? Has this become more of a feature? And to what extent do you have therefore different visibility on price going forward? And the last was just if you had any particular views or comments on GlobalWafers' apparent spending on a Korean facility in the 12-inch arena.

C
Christoph von Plotho
Chairman of Executive Board & CEO

All right. I'm not sure I got the whole question but were those definitely relating to FX impact. So we've had 1 cent, one U.S. dollar cent, is a EUR 7.5 million on revenue and roughly EUR 6 million on gross margin. And if you look at a quarter, just simply divide that by 4, and you get the impact and then you see the other operating income expenses, you see the contribution from hedging. And I didn't really get the second question because the line wasn't very good.

P
Peter Testa

Right. The second question related to the prepayment, the increased use of prepayments that you have, which is essentially customers both paying for future deliveries. I was wondering if you could give us any sense as to how that proportion of your business is changing? And what implications there are for visibility, or comments you can make on price going through the year and now into 2020?

C
Christoph von Plotho
Chairman of Executive Board & CEO

Well prepayment is something that we do in few LTAs. Most of them are linked to Siltronic spending money to create additional capacity. And for that, we want to have a certain cost and covered with prepayments.

P
Peter Testa

So not prepayments for booking of or forward selling of capacity -- existing capacity?

C
Christoph von Plotho
Chairman of Executive Board & CEO

Right.

P
Peter Testa

Okay. And then the question on GlobalWafers, please?

C
Christoph von Plotho
Chairman of Executive Board & CEO

In most cases, no. Payments for additional -- I mean prepayments, we receive now are for capacity extensions.

P
Peter Testa

Right. And then just a last question on GlobalWafers and their apparent interest in spending a lot of money in Korea.

R
Rainer Irle

Yes. I'm pretty sure, I mean, we read exactly what you read, and I think there's nothing we can add.

Operator

The next question is from Sebastian Hou of BLS.

S
Sebastian Hou
Research Analyst

I'm Sebastian from CLAC (sic) [ CLSA ]. Just a few questions. The first one is the -- I probably missed this earlier, but there was a reason for the slower price out in 2018 versus 2017. Because when I look at your Asian peers, they don't seem to see any slowdown price hike. Is it more because of U.S.-priced more in 2017? So is it a relative issue? Or do see any sign of supply time is easing? I think that is my first question.

R
Rainer Irle

So I think the whole thing kicked off late 2016, when we said that we would increase prices. So we're kind of the first ones in the industry to take that route, and there is some industry data where we can take the average price in the industry from. So we saw that during last year, our price increases seems to be higher than the industry average. At maybe at the end of year, our average price was in many cases quite a bit higher than the industry average. And we said, now that we are expecting our peers now to follow strategy and to pick up, and maybe we see a bit of that in Q1.

S
Sebastian Hou
Research Analyst

Okay. So is more of a relative basis issue. Second question is that the presentation slides talked about the crystal pull rate in the Capex spending this year is for further wafer capacity expansion in 2020. So does that mean that you may initiate another phase of expansion sometime later this year or in 2019 for the capacity to come online by 2020?

C
Christoph von Plotho
Chairman of Executive Board & CEO

Our plan is to maintain our market share, so we will definitely expand capacity in 2020. As Chris said, we have enough room and existing shelves to expand wafering capacity. But basically all our crystal pulling buildings are full, so the first step that we need to prepare for 2020 is to create room for additional crystal pullers and that's what we are doing now in Singapore.

S
Sebastian Hou
Research Analyst

Okay. So what's the mass capacity of this puller it may potentially support?

R
Rainer Irle

So when we have the new crystal hall in Singapore, we have enough space for additional pullers there. So that can match the maximum of the wafer capacity that we have, right? So we can expand, then, those over the next years.

S
Sebastian Hou
Research Analyst

Got it. Is there any conditions that needs to be met before you decide to add capacity? The reason I'm asking is that the -- for example, the you were talking about this peer at GlobalWafers, you talk about like 3 conditions that need to be met. Was it sustainable pricing, customer commitment for 5 years, and only investing in advanced [ NAND ]. So I wonder if there's any condition that you also have that kind of condition in mind?

R
Rainer Irle

You all accept that -- I mean, you said in 2016, that we will never add capacity if prices don't go up by at least 30%. And we actually saw the 30% higher prices end of last year. So we decided to invest, and we are signing long-term contracts with customers. So all the capacity we're adding in '19 and '20 is already sold at good prices.

S
Sebastian Hou
Research Analyst

And good prices, then, have to be sustainable?

R
Rainer Irle

Yes. When we talk about the long-term contract with prepayments, we're talking about contract with fixed volumes and fixed prices.

S
Sebastian Hou
Research Analyst

Got it. So the prepayment that you talk about that is going to receive like over EUR 100 million of the prepayment of this year. Is -- so for this prepayment you're going to receive is for the announced 70k capacity expansion? Or it's for something further beyond?

R
Rainer Irle

Yes, it's for expansions in 2019 and 2020. For expansions in 2019, we had already received some prepayments last year. Additional ones early this year. And then going forward, we received prepayments also for expansions in 2020.

S
Sebastian Hou
Research Analyst

Got it. So how much percent of the prepayment accounts for as total Capex spending that you're looking at?

R
Rainer Irle

Yes. I'm sure you understand that we can't disclose that in any great detail. Though it will be substantial portion of the CapEx.

S
Sebastian Hou
Research Analyst

Okay, substantial portion. That's good enough. Last question from me is that -- it's just the overbooking, this concerns among some of the investors that have -- because you know that when something is tight, customers will tend to book more just to ensure that they get what they need. And I think in TSMC, one of your customers they earn is coal[indiscernible] just last week they talk about -- their even 3 days in treating first quarter. And well, part of that is due to that a company, they accumulated more of the railway for inventory during the low season in first quarter. So my question is that the earlier -- I think you talk about demand is very strong, no signs of slowdown, but just on the overbooking, inventory build-outs. Just kind of the concern, how do you know that your customers are not [ compiled enough ] inventory internally?

R
Rainer Irle

Typically, customers are not building inventory on very high price wafers. Typically they do that in other phases. And on the other hand, we always have the complaint that the inventories are going down. And inventories going down and building up inventory does not fit together.

S
Sebastian Hou
Research Analyst

Okay. So based on your [ checks ] to understanding is that your customers overall, their inventory, with inventory still going down at current stage?

C
Christoph von Plotho
Chairman of Executive Board & CEO

They continue to ask for additional supply because inventory is too low.

Operator

The next question is from Rob Sanders of Deutsche Bank.

R
Robert Duncan Cobban Sanders
Director

Just wanted to ask a quick question about this deal that PVA TePla did with GCL just after your last set of results. It's basically a licensing deal, as you know, from -- on the puller technology, and they're going to be producing in China rather than in their facilities in Europe. I was just wondering how -- is there any -- is there any IP protection issue here? Because I assume you codevelop these pullers together. How would you protect your IP? I know that this is not the only IP that GCL would need to enter the market, but I'm just interested how you can protect your IP from leaking out. Because clearly, they have ambitions to enter the market at some point.

C
Christoph von Plotho
Chairman of Executive Board & CEO

Yes. I mean, the simple answer, we are not concerned. The longer arm[indiscernible] is -- the IP is not in the puller itself. The IP in the way you operate it. All the technological details, the heaters, the hot [ saunters ] and so on, that's the know-how and that know-how is only with us, it's not with the manufacturer of the puller. And also the design they will be selling is not exactly the design we are using. So overall, I think the simple summary is we are not concerned.

R
Robert Duncan Cobban Sanders
Director

Okay. And then, just out of interest, when do you think that could be ready and competitive on 300?

C
Christoph von Plotho
Chairman of Executive Board & CEO

I didn't get that. Can you say that again?

R
Robert Duncan Cobban Sanders
Director

So based on your large know-how, do you think that they could be ready to enter the market maybe in 2024, something like that, based on assuming that they can throw a lot of money at the problem? Or do you think the lessons of history are that these guys will never succeed for a long time?

C
Christoph von Plotho
Chairman of Executive Board & CEO

Well I think we never said that they will never succeed, but we said that 300 millimeters produced in mainland China will not play a significant role in the next 5 years. That's what we've always said and there is no reason to think different today.

R
Rainer Irle

If you do the comparison to polysilicon, I think some of these providers, they have been trying now for more than 10 years, and they are still like at least 2 generations behind. And I'm pretty sure that producing vapors is more complicated than producing polysilicon.

Operator

The next question is from John McPate from BTIG.

J
John McPate

Just a question on cash. So you already mentioned your cash balance is already the highest it's ever been. And back of the envelope, as you continue to add capacity, [ places ] are increasing through this year implied through 2019 as well. It looks even post CapEx by end of 2019 that you will have something over -- and post dividend, something over EUR 1 billion of cash on the balance sheet. But what's your thinking about use of that cash? And then I've got a follow up.

R
Rainer Irle

The quality of the line is really not good, but I'm trying to -- so yes, we have a lot of cash on hand. Obviously, quite a bit, quite high cash flow in Q1 as CapEx was low. In Q1, we'll be higher than the rest of the year. We have been investing a lot. We just pay the dividend and we are getting additional prepayments, which is kind of something that we need to pay back later to customers. So I think we have -- we have a good portion of cash on hand and we will use it wisely.

J
John McPate

And then the follow-up. Semco generally gives a little detail on the kind of view of the industry demand and supply and certainly the last 3 or 4 quarters, these are chart showing the industry area growth rate of being, coming on a CAGR of between 4% and 5%, and this thing is just stacked up with the way that you guys and your competitors are adding capacity. But they also show in their charts the customer forecast is somewhere north of 8% CAGR in terms of area? But the industry seems to be determined to build at a slower rate than that. So would you agree that could be a picture where there is consistent overordering by those customers? Or double ordering in the condition that you guys are already experiencing of undersupply. I think if I've heard you correctly, you already said some customers have been missing wafer starts as a result of the shortages that exist today. So how do you see that long-term supply demand dynamic playing out?

R
Rainer Irle

I think the best thing you can do is look at the inventories. After all, wafer inventories is our customers. And as Chris said, we believe that all wafer inventories are coming further down. We see continuous extra amounts of efforts [indiscernible] every day. And as Chris said, customers and more customers are talking about missed wafer starts. So we don't see anything like double ordering or so. Then also customers come to us and they definitely want to sign more LTAs -- the longer-term LTAs, want to give us additional prepayments and they would love to have more LTAs. Far beyond the workweek can extend. So I think in summary, we can simply say we don't see anything of double ordering or anything like that.

Operator

The next question is a follow up of Amit Harchandani of Citigroup.

A
Amit B. Harchandani
Vice President and Analyst

Just a quick one. Again, going back to China. As you know, there is obviously the indigenous or the domestic Chinese players who are trying to do production internally in the country. They obviously need wafers. You commented earlier that the domestic Chinese [ 300-mil ] wafer manufacturers would need some time to get up to speed and reach the desired level of specification. So the existing wafer manufacturers do need to, at some stage, start supplying into these indigenous Chinese chip makers. I was wondering how you are thinking about it strategically. Obviously, your loyalties might lie to the customers you've been servicing in the past. At the same time there is a lot of news, but actual things on the ground might differ in China. I'm just trying to understand how would you strategically approaching your relationships with these potential new customers coming out of China?

C
Christoph von Plotho
Chairman of Executive Board & CEO

Well I think overall, it's a very challenging environment, because when you add all the capacities which are supposed to come on stream during -- between 2017 and 2020, there is no way that we and competitors could serve that quantity. And even if it's only half of it, it's still 800,000[indiscernible] Position of wafers which would be very, very difficult to find. So -- and of course, in a situation where you cannot satisfy all the demands that you get, you concentrate in the first run on the so-called traditional customers and the traditionalists are the ones which are partnering since many, many years with Siltronic.

A
Amit B. Harchandani
Vice President and Analyst

So would it be fair to say at this stage, you have no real exposure to indigenous Chinese customers and it's unlikely to be meaningful in the next [ 30 years ]?

C
Christoph von Plotho
Chairman of Executive Board & CEO

[indiscernible] Very little.

A
Amit B. Harchandani
Vice President and Analyst

Okay. And it's unlikely to change in the next couple of years, I presume, given how your agreements have shaped up so far over the past...

C
Christoph von Plotho
Chairman of Executive Board & CEO

I think we talked about investments, we talked about the speed of investment. We talked about the fact that it's very difficult to do a quick capacity increase, because you don't get the equipment. And we also said that we want to grow with the market. We invest in line with the market share that we have. That's what we're trying to do and that's already difficult.

Operator

[Operator Instructions] There are no further questions. I hand back to the speakers.

P
Petra Muller
Director of Investor Relations & Communications

Thank you everybody for taking part in the call today. If you have any further questions, we're happy to follow up afterwards. I wish you all a very Good day. Goodbye.