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spk08: Good afternoon and welcome to DIODE Incorporated fourth quarter and fiscal 2020 financial results conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. At the conclusion of today's conference call, instructions will be given for the question and answer session. If anyone needs assistance at any time during the conference call, please press the star key followed by the zero on your touchtone phone. As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded today, Tuesday, February 16th, 2021. I would now like to turn the call over to Leanne Severs of Shelton Group Investor Relations. Leanne, please go ahead.
spk04: Good afternoon, and welcome to DIODE's fourth quarter and fiscal 2020 financial results conference call. I'm Leanne Severs, president of Shelton Group, DIODE's investor relations firm. Joining us today are DIODE's chairman, president, and CEO, Dr. Kashi Liu, chief financial officer, Brett Whitmire, senior vice president of worldwide sales and marketing, Emily Yang, and Director of Investor Relations, Laura Murrell. Before I turn the call over to Dr. Liu, I'd like to remind our listeners that the results announced today are preliminary as they are subject to the company finalizing its closing procedures and customary quarterly review by the company's independent registered public accounting firm. As such, these results are unaudited and subject to revision until the company files its Form 10-K for its 2020 fiscal year ending December 31, 2020. In addition, management prepared remarks contain forward-looking statements which are subject to risks and uncertainties, and management may make additional forward-looking statements in response to your question. Therefore, the company claims the protection of the safe harbor for forward-looking statements that is contained in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Actual results may differ from those discussed today, and therefore we refer you to a more detailed discussion of the risks and uncertainties in the company's filings of the Securities and Exchange Commission, including Forms 10-K and 10-Q. In addition, any projections as to the company's future performance represent management's estimates as of today, February 16, 2021. Diode assumes no obligation to update these projections in the future as market conditions may or may not change, except to the extent required by applicable law. Additionally, the company's press release and management statement during this conference call will include discussions of certain measures and financial information in GAAP and non-GAAP terms. Included in the company's press release are definitions and reconciliations of GAAP to non-GAAP items, which provide additional details. Also, throughout the company's press release and management statements during this conference call, we refer to net income attributable to common stockholders as GAAP net income. For those of you unable to listen to the entire call at this time, a recording will be available via webcast for 90 days in the investor relations section of DIODE's website at www.diodes.com. And now I'll turn the call over to DIODE's chairman, president, and CEO, Dr. Keishu Liu. Dr. Liu, please go ahead.
spk01: Thank you, Deanne. Welcome, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. We ended the year achieving the highest quarterly revenue in companies' history, even excluding the revenue contribution from our acquisition of Dione Semiconductor that closed on November 30th. Total organic revenue grew 7.8% sequentially and 10.7% year-over-year, demonstrating the continued success of our product, content, and customer expansion initiatives. Revenue from our Pelican products and automotive market also reached record levels. with automotive revenue growing 24% sequentially and 40% year-over-year, both of which contributed to our solid market share gains in the quarter. All of those accomplishments are notable achievements, especially concerning the ongoing global pandemic. Following the successful completion of AOC acquisition, the integration process has been advancing smoothly. On December 1st, we initially announced the new operation structure for the commanding companies and they named it Gary Yu, Senior Vice President, who is in charge of all the business group and also has been tested with all integration activities. We have been actively working to qualify dial products in the LSC factory and expect to begin making production start in the middle of this year with the expectation of Exyn 2021 with significant momentum in this area. In regard to the product, customer, and in-market synergy, those are multi-year efforts that span the product development process by working closely with our customer and serving them with our combined product portfolio. As mentioned in our annual release today, the LSE business was immediately accredited to our result, earning two cents per share on a non-GAAP basis in the fourth quarter. As I just mentioned, we believe LSE also offers future opportunities for synergetic growth. and expansion across our end market, product offering, customer, and the manufacturing footprint. In addition to road synergies, the repurchasing of 14.7% of dialed share that was previously hauled by LLC which drive additional earning powers when combined with diode solid operating leverage. As we look to the first quarter, we expect to further extend this strong momentum and, once again, set a new revenue and growth profit record with sequential growth projected both organically and on a consolidated basis in what has previously been a seasonally down quarter for our business. This anticipated growth is being driven by record POS revenue in the fourth quarter. We look forward to reporting our ongoing progress and the remaining focus on integrating the LLC business via capitalizing on the long-term opportunities for continued growth and ending expansion. With that, let me now turn the call over to Brett to discuss our first quarter financial result and our first quarter 2021 guidance in more detail.
spk06: Thanks Dr. Liu and good afternoon everyone. As part of my financial review today I will focus my comments on the sequential change for each of the line items and would refer you to our press release for more detailed review of our results as well as the year-over-year comparisons. Revenue for the fourth quarter 2020 was a record $350.4 million which included $16.9 million of one month of revenue from LSC, an increase of 13.2% on a consolidated basis and 7.8% on an organic basis from the $309.5 million in the third quarter of 2020. Gross profit for the fourth quarter was also a record at $122.7 million and included $2.5 million from LSC or 35.0% of revenue on a consolidated basis, and 36.0% of revenue for diodes only. This compares to $111.1 million, or 35.9% of revenue in the third quarter 2020. GAAP operating expenses for the fourth quarter 2020 were $82.9 million, or 23.7% of revenue, And on a non-GAAP basis, we're $75 million or 21.4% of revenue, which excludes $4 million of amortization of acquisition-related intangible asset expenses, $2.5 million restructuring costs, and $1.5 million of other acquisition-related costs. This compares to non-GAAP operating expenses in the prior quarter of $73.2 million, or 23.7% of revenue. Total other expense amounted to approximately $3.7 million for the quarter, including $4 million in interest expense, $3.7 million in foreign currency loss, partially offset by $3.5 million of other income, and $487,000 of interest income. Income before taxes and non-controlling interest in the fourth quarter 2020 was $36.1 million, compared to $33.3 million in the previous quarter. Turning to income taxes, our effective income tax rate for the fourth quarter was approximately 16.7%. Gap net income for the fourth quarter 2020 was $29.7 million, or 59 cents per diluted share, which included 3 cents per share from LSE, and compared to GAAP net income of $27.2 million, or 51 cents per diluted share, in the third quarter of 2020. The share count used to compute GAAP diluted EPS for the fourth quarter of 2020 was 50.4 million shares, which reflects a reduction in the weighted average share count due to the repurchase of approximately 7.8 million diode shares from LSE for the one month since closing. As mentioned in our press release today, we expect the share count for the first quarter to be approximately 45.7 million shares. Non-GAAP adjusted net income for the fourth quarter was $37.3 million, or 74 cents per diluted share. which excluded net of tax $4 million of acquisition-related financing and other acquisition-related costs, $3.3 million of non-cash acquisition-related intangibles expense, $2 million of restructuring costs, and a $1.7 million gain in value on certain LSC investments. LSC contributed $0.02 per share to fourth quarter non-GAAP earnings. Non-GAAP adjusted net income in the third quarter 2020 was $32.8 million, or 62 cents per diluted share. Included in the fourth quarter 2020 GAAP net income and non-GAAP adjusted net income was approximately $5.1 million, net of tax of non-cash share-based compensation expense. Excluding share-based compensation expense, both GAAP earnings per share and non-GAAP adjusted EPS would have increased by $0.10 per diluted share for fourth quarter 2020 and $0.09 for the third quarter 2020. EBITDA for the fourth quarter was $67.1 million or 19.1% of revenue compared to $63.3 million or 20.5% of revenue in the prior quarter. We have included in our earnings release a reconciliation of GAAP net income to non-GAAP adjusted net income and GAAP net income to EBITDA, which provides additional details. Cash flow generated from operations was $60.8 million for the fourth quarter 2020. Free cash flow was $33.5 million for the fourth quarter 2020. which includes $27.3 million for capital expenditures. Net cash flow in the fourth quarter was a negative $319.3 million, which included the purchase of a light-on semiconductor during the quarter for approximately $453.4 million. Turning to the balance sheet, at the end of fourth quarter, cash, cash equivalents, restricted cash, plus short-term investments included totaled approximately $327 million. Working capital was $514 million, and total debt, including long-term and short-term, was $451 million. In terms of inventory, at the end of fourth quarter, total inventory days decreased to approximately 114 in the quarter on a consolidated basis, and 110 days for diodes only, as compared to 120 last quarter. Finished goods inventory days also decreased to 31 from 32 in third quarter 2020. Total inventory dollars increased $45.1 million to approximately $305.4 million, which reflects the addition of LSE. Total inventory in the quarter consisted of a $17.1 million increase in work in process, a $15.7 million increase in finished goods, and a $12.3 million increase in raw materials. Capital expenditures on a cash basis for the fourth quarter of 2020 were $27.3 million, or 7.8% of revenue, which remains within our target model of 5% to 9%. Now turning to our outlook. Building on our growth momentum in the fourth quarter and record POS results, we expect revenue in the first quarter of 2021 to increase to approximately $400 million, plus or minus 3%, which represents a record on both an organic and consolidated basis for a combined increase of 14% sequentially at the midpoint. This guidance... represents organic growth significantly better than the typical seasonality of sequentially down 5% on average in the same prior two-year periods. We expect gap gross margin on a consolidated basis to be 33.6%, plus or minus 1%, which includes an approximately 3% impact due to a full quarter of LSE. Non-GAAP operating expenses, which are GAAP operating expenses adjusted for amortization of acquisition-related intangible assets, are expected to be approximately 22% of revenue, plus or minus 1%. We expect net interest expense to be approximately $3.3 million. Our income tax rate is expected to be 18%, plus or minus 3%, and shares used to calculate diluted EPS are for the first quarter are anticipated to be approximately 45.7 million shares. Please note that purchasing accounting adjustments of $3.3 million after tax for Paracom and previous acquisitions is not included in these non-GAAP estimates. With that said, I now turn the call over to Emily Yang.
spk05: Thank you, Brett, and good afternoon. In the fourth quarter, revenue increased 13.2% quarter-over-quarter on a consolidated basis and 7.8% organically, which is at the high end of our guidance, primarily due to better-than-expected demand in Asia, followed by North America and Europe. Looking more closely at the fourth quarter revenue, POS revenue reached record levels, which is driving our expectations for the continued growth in the first quarter. Distributor inventory in terms of weeks decreased quarter over quarter, which is slightly below our defined normal range of 11 to 14 weeks. We expect distributor inventories to return to our normal range in the near term. Looking at the global sales in the fourth quarter, Asia represented 81% of revenue, Europe 11%, and North America 8%. In terms of our end markets, computing represents 23%, industrial 23%, consumer 22% of revenue, communication 20%, and automotive 12% of revenue. We achieved record revenue in automotive and computing end markets, with computing being driven by record quarterly revenue for our Paracon products. Now let me review the end market in greater details. Starting with automotive, Diode continues its strong growth momentum achieving record quarterly revenue and reaching 12% of the total revenue. This represents a growth of almost 24% sequentially and 40% year-over-year. There are three application areas where Diode continues to gain significant traction, including connected driving, which consists of ADAS, telematic, and infotainment systems, comfort, style, and safety, including lighting and Brussels DC motors, as well as powertrain, covers conventional hybrid electric vehicles. In connected driving, we saw demand for our new product in infotainment, lighting control system, speedometer, horn, alarm systems. More specifically, diodes automotive-grade switching, TVS, Zener diodes, and crystal oscillators contributed to the growth in this application. In comfort, style, and safety, We have strong success with our MOSFET brushless DC motor controllers, Linux drivers, and bipolar transistors in applications such as daylight running lights, styling, instrument lighting, as well as gate driver ICs in interior wireless charging. Our LED drivers and our power transistors are also gaining market share in this space for taillights, interior illumination, and exterior lighting applications. Our unipolar hall effect switch family is also gaining strong market traction for seatbelts, seat position, front roof, as well as trunk and window openers applications. In vehicle powertrain, diode supplies into conventional internal combustion engine powertrain, as well as for hybrid electric vehicles. Our SBR rectifier has been designed into many of these applications. We have also secured multiple design wings and opportunities for switching and zener diodes, rectifier, and discrete MOSFETs in battery manning systems for electric vehicles, as well as emergent applications like mini electric vehicles, micro-mile hybrid, and e-scooter systems. In the industrial market, revenue increased 18% sequentially, as we continue to extend our momentum in applications including solar power inverters, power distribution systems, and smart metering systems, all of which were the main contributors in driving growth for our product. We also continue to see strong demand for our high-voltage rectified products in smart infrastructure solutions, as well as adoption of our PCI Express packet switch in the industrial applications to connect multiple PCIe endpoints with the CPU. Also during the quarter, we began to see increasing new design-ins for LED drivers in UVC lighting applications, as well as numerous design-ins and design-wins for our YV-LDO product family. We also saw rapid growth for our newly released DC-DC converters in LED lighting emitters power tools, and charging applications. Additionally, our series of voltage regulators and SBR devices continue to gain traction in DC fan applications with the MOSFET demand increasing for both discrete-based inverters and module-based inverters. In the consumer market, shipments for the adapter power IC continue to grow throughout the year. We also saw high demand in the gaming and high-resolution display markets as end users increasingly require high-quality video provided through HDMI and DisplayPort. As a result of this trend, our HDMI and DisplayPort redrivers are gaining traction with key chipset vendor reference designs. We're also seeing an increased number of design-ins for our LED drivers, as well as demand for larger monitor continues to grow. Also in the consumer, we continue to see strong interest for our discrete products, including bipolar transistors, ultra-small size transistors, and shock key barrier diodes in applications like amplifiers, Bluetooth headphones, and drums. Turning to communication market, wireless communication applications continue to expand, driving revenue generations for Zener TVS diodes in Bluetooth earpods, smart speakers, and smart lighting, as well as point-to-point and point-to-multipoint links. Our high surge TVS for smartphone power line protection has gained strong growth momentum in new fast charging applications, along with video cameras, access control panels, and audio broadcasting systems. We're also seeing more design ins and design wins in mobile phones, cable modems, optical network terminals, 5G CPE routers, radio remote unit, and base stations applications for our MOSFET, low saturated high voltage transistors, low voltage hall sensors, and RF LDO products. Bipolar junction transistors, SBR, and Schottky products are also gaining traction in applications like 5G outdoor access points, CPE, access point routers, power over Ethernet switches, cable modem, Wi-Fi routers, IoT gateways, and mobile battery applications. Lastly, in computing, we reach record quarterly revenue, driven by record quarterly revenue for our Paracom products. Due to COVID-19, shelter-in-place continue to drive demand for new and upgraded laptops, tablets, and other related products. We're also seeing strong demand for power management, LDO, hot sensor, DC-to-DC converters, low switches, and audio amplifier product in the notebooks and monitor applications. ESD protection for USB Type-C in the notebook and portable devices also continue to be a strong area for our TVS, SBR, shop key products. Also during the quarter, growth momentum continues in surfer applications, along with good momentum in our timing product assembly to support PCI Express Gen 4 and Gen 5 requirements. This provides flexibility to our customers with seamless migration from PCI Express Gen 4 to PCI Express Gen 4 in the future without changing the timing path design. In summary, we ended 2020 achieving the highest quarterly revenue in the company's history and are guided for other quarter of growth in the first quarter, both organically and on a consolidated basis to set a stage for a strong year in 2021. This growth reflects the success we've been achieving with our total solution sales approach and demand creation effort to increase the content and share across new and existing customers and applications. We look forward to the capitalizing on the synergies and opportunities that Lyon Semiconductors offers to DIOS across our end markets, product offerings, customers, and manufacturing footprints. With that, we now open the floor to questions. Operator.
spk08: Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, if you have a question, please press star then one on your telephone. To withdraw your question, press the pound key. And our first question comes from the line of Gary Mobley with Wells Fargo.
spk02: Hey, everyone. Hope you're staying warm in frigid Dallas. I wanted to start out by asking some questions about Lidon now that you've had a couple of months with the company under your belt. I know in your prepared remarks you talked about qualifying some of your existing DIOS products on some of the Lidon manufacturing facilities, but could you speak about the timeline for some of the sales synergies to be wrung out of the acquisition?
spk01: Hi, Caley. Yeah, we are aggressive to qualify the product in the, we call, JKF. Okay, and currently, we are almost done, and probably one more quarter, we should be completed to finish the qualifications. Okay, but, you know, it takes time, to do the PCN to notify the customer, to get customer accept the site change. And so we are looking at probably ramp up the JKF web currently is about 50% loaded. We are looking at somewhere around 70% in end of third quarter and probably 80% by end of the year because it takes time for customer to accept our change notice and some of them take even much longer. So we are looking at that kind of schedule.
spk05: Right.
spk01: So Gary, this is Emily.
spk05: So just to add a little bit of color related to the sales synergy, I think this really depends on the market segment and also the customer qualification schedule. I think for that area of synergy, it's probably going to take somewhere between, I would say, six months, the best scenario, to maybe a couple years, right? So, again, it's really down to the market segment and also the customer specifics.
spk02: Okay. I had a follow-up question as well related to light on. In an industry, you know, with an industry backdrop where a lot of your competitors are capacity-constrained, in what ways can diodes benefit from having this underutilized manufacturing capacity at light on, assuming, you know, all the qualifications go according to plan? In other words, you know, how easy, given those circumstances, will it be for you guys to take some market share from your competitors who are, again, capacity-constrained?
spk05: Gary, let me address that question. I think overall, right, the current global shortfall for semiconductor supply actually helped DIOS, right? If we just look at the 4Q, you know, we did have a record revenue with 7.8% sequentially and 10.7% year-over-year growth, which is really a strong evidence of our continued success in the product content and customer expansion initiatives, right? So if we just look at the first quarter guidance, we actually guided 14% quarter-over-quarter growth at the midpoint. And compared to our seasonality slowdown, in average we talked about, you know, for the last two quarters about 5% drop. This is, again, a significant sign of the continued success, right? So we do see, you know, some of the constraints. So other than the MOSFET, you know, we actually see some of the tightness, but what we've been doing is actually aggressively working with the customers and understand their true demand, and we're able to resolve some of the bottlenecks, right? I think for the MOSFET, we've been very aggressively working with our foundry partners to really kind of resolve the out-of-balance problem, and at this moment, we are working Also, you know, if you remember the SFAB 2 8-inch extension, as well as the GFAB that we acquired more than a year ago to expand our capacity in both of these FABs in both of these areas, right? So I think in the longer term, we do have enough wafer FAB capacity. You know, that's actually, again, the GFAB, right, majority is 8-inch, also some of the 6-inch FAB capacity. And also with the light-on semiconductor acquisition that we recently closed in November, and that will also give us additional six-inch capacity at the JKFAB that Dr. Liu mentioned. So, you know, I think with all this, right, so I think we are well-positioned for our future growth, and, you know, this is really focusing on the additional business, you know, with our internal capacity to support it.
spk01: Appreciate it. Thank you. In addition to what Emory is talking about, we actually ramp it up on our Shanghai FAB, you know, S-FAB, 8-inch, ramp up the 8-inch capacity in Shanghai FAB, too.
spk08: Thanks, Dr. Floyd. Thank you. And our next question comes from the line of Matt Ramsey with Cowan.
spk09: Hi, this is Josh Buckhalter on behalf of Matt. Thanks for taking the question and congrats on the great results. I guess asking the previous question a little differently, are you able to help us understand a little bit how much of the significant above-seasonal first quarter guidance is indeed being driven by you guys being in a pretty unique situation of having some slack in your own internal capacity and able to fill orders that some of your peers aren't?
spk06: Well, I think that that's exactly right. Some of that seasonality strength that we have is a couple of things. One, it's the fact that we have capacity that we're continuing to be able to take advantage of through all the various avenues, meaning LSC, GFAB expansion, as well as SFAB. On top of that, it's the continued strength we're seeing across a broad market and actions we've been taking across time to make sure and be prepared for that. So I think it's a blend of those things that allow us to enjoy the above seasonal growth into first quarter.
spk09: Got it. Thank you. And then I guess given the above seasonal fourth quarter and first quarter, and I realize you're not guiding the full year, but anything you can provide us on visibility into the second quarter and the rest of the year or how we should think about the seasonality of the rest of the year? Thanks and congrats again.
spk05: So this is Emily. Let me maybe start by making a few comments. So we don't usually provide guidance beyond the first quarter. I think, you know, Dr. Liu mentioned before, overall, the markets feel extremely dynamic, right? So, you know, we just need to monitor the situation closely. I think overall, you know, this is not specific to DIOS. I think everybody expects 2021 to be an up market. I think we're definitely not in the position to call the percentage or provide guidance at this moment, but we'll keep you posted as we progress throughout the years.
spk09: Got it. Thank you.
spk08: Thank you. And our next question comes from the line of William Stein with Truist Securities.
spk10: Great. Thank you for taking my question. I want to add my congratulations, especially on the very strong Q1 guidance. There's one aspect of it, though, that's a little surprising. The OPEX that you're guiding to looks like it's more than what the standalone companies would have delivered combined together, sort of almost a dis-synergy. I think, Dr. Liu, you've talked about this as related to incremental R&D required, and perhaps that's to qualify the diode products on the light-on production lines. Can you maybe quantify that a little bit, what that investment is? And perhaps as a follow-up, you can talk about what, if any, incremental costs are required to develop the light-on portfolio to a level where it's something that you can effectively cross-sell to the Heritage Diode customers. Thank you.
spk01: Well, the R&D expense in LHC, is lower than the level of DIOS. So I intend to do is increase the R&D to about the same level as DIOS currently has. So that is what I intend to do. Secondly is we need to start to focus of introduce the differentiate type of product. Currently, their product, most of them is a commodity type of product. And my intention is driving the focus, drive the product definition and to introduce differentiate type of product using their special technology. And what's another question? Is that?
spk10: I was asking about the effort to cross-sell the light-on product into your traditional customer base. I think you had referred to an incremental R&D investment to make that happen. Perhaps you can discuss that a bit. Is it a matter of – just proving out the quality of these products to your heritage customers, or is it in developing new products altogether?
spk01: Well, it's not just that. But it's not just that. Number one is, you know, I think we are talking about three synergies we're talking about. One is market synergy because they are very weak in the industrial and automotive market segment. So we intend to introduce their product into those two market segments. Number two is customer synergies. They typically cannot design into the multi-nation customers. And that's another focus we're going to do to improve the focus, improve the design in those major customers. Number three is the product portfolio. You know, we are focused on solution sales instead of component sales. And that solution sales is, you know, adding the product portfolio through different acquisitions inside DIOS in the past. And LSC is the last acquisition we had and we're going to add in their product line into our total product portfolios and to introduce them into solution, customer solution requirements. So those is what we intend to do other than qualify their product good enough for the major customer. That's just one of the action, but the key one will be the three synergy we're going to go after. Thank you.
spk08: Thank you. And as a reminder, ladies and gentlemen, to ask a question, you'll need to press star 1 on your telephone. Our next question comes from the line of David Williams with Loop Capital. Pardon me, David. Please check your mute button.
spk07: My apologies there. I had inadvertently pressed mute. But congrats on the quarter, and thanks for letting me hop on and ask a question. Certainly appreciate it. I wanted to ask a little bit about maybe some of the share gains that you're seeing today and how sticky you think those may be just in terms of picking up new customers from maybe where your competitors maybe have been unable to supply. Do you think that's fairly sticky in terms of those wins, or do you see a reversal or maybe some of those returning to the competitor as you get capacity constraints begin to fall off?
spk05: Right. So, David, I think this is Emily. Let me address that question, right? So anytime there is a market change, always create opportunity for DIOS, right? So one of the key focus for us is really focus on the content expansion and customer expansion that we talk about. So I believe that, you know, new opportunity, new doors open to us, and that will be a long-term opportunity to DIOS is not going to be a short-term. So I think, you know, again, the total solution sales that we've been focusing on, and continue to expand our technology, what Dr. Liu just mentioned earlier, and continue to drive the contact expansion. So we just need to capture the opportunity when it's present and make sure we continue to support the customer and build a strong customer relationship so that will be a long-term business instead of short-term.
spk07: Okay. Thanks. And then maybe in terms of the gross margin, Brett, if you kind of think about how the utilization rates come up in the next couple of quarters, how do you think the gross margin benefits and when can you get the LSC margin profile maybe more in line with the corporate average or maybe the diode legacy kind of average?
spk06: Yeah, David, I think that what you'll see and I think what you'll see in the guide is that we're consistently improving the DIODES organic margin consistent to what we had said, and we're basically bringing in the LSC business consistent to what we had imagined the impact would be. The immediate thing we're working on, as Dr. Liu talked about a little bit, was the qualification of the DIODES products in the LSC factories, which will help the LSC margins. We expect to be able to start making those starts middle of the year. which gives us a decent amount of momentum as we come out of the year. And then the other synergies that were listed, you know, these are more multi-year areas of synergy. And so the real key, as Dr. Liu mentioned, invest more in the product line, immediately start getting traction with design in and design when. And so some of those longer lead time synergies, we can get some traction on that quickly. But I think this is going to be a gradual multi-year activity to bring the LSC margins in line with our expectations for continued growth.
spk07: Thanks so much.
spk08: Thank you. And our next question comes from the line of Tristan Guerra with Baird.
spk03: Yeah. Hi, everyone. This is Dustin speaking for Tristan today. Thanks for taking our questions. For our first question, I know you guys talked earlier about some supply constraints in MOSFETs. First, just want to clarify that that's mostly an automotive, and maybe if you guys can just give an expectation on when those supply constraints may disappear. And then secondarily, are you able to tweak mix given the tightness, and do you plan on raising ASPs? Then I have a follow-up after. Sure.
spk05: Right, so let me address that question. I think for the overall shortage in the industry, this is really, you know, no surprises driven a lot by the 8-inch shortage that we've seen, right? So I don't think we are in position to predict when this is going to be over. What DIO has been focusing is really expanding some of our internal capacities to support our future growth, right? So we talked about the GFAB being, you know, acquired more than a year ago, and by the second half of the year, we're going to ramp up some significant capacity in both 8-inch and also in 6-inch. Dr. Liu talked a little bit about the SFAT 2 8-inch capacity increase as well, and with the Lyon semiconductor acquisition increased more 6-inch capacity for us, right? So overall, I think what we focus on is really position ourselves to really support the customer's true demand and be able to continue to expand from that area. So the second question you have is related to the product mix. So changing the product mix, improving margin has been an ongoing focus for DIOS throughout the last few years, and you can definitely see some of the results that we demonstrated to you guys already, and that will continue to be the focus. So we want to continue to focus on driving good new products with better margin profiles to really support the customer's need. So that strategy will not change. It fitted really well with our total solution sales strategy. So I think that's really your second part of the question, right? So, again, price increase is, you know, definitely not the key focus for DIOS. Again, we really want to focus on the product mix improvement as well as the total solution sales, demand creation, and also the contact expansion.
spk03: Got it. Great. Thanks, Emily. And obviously, POS has been very strong. I think you guys just said it was a record. Just wondering overall how pricing has been acting recently, and if there's been significant changes, maybe you guys could quantify them. And then finally... have you seen any evidence of double ordering at either Tier 1 or Tier 2 customers? Thank you.
spk05: Right. So definitely, you know, in my speech that we have a record revenue of POS, we've definitely seen strong momentum actually across all the regions, which is the reason we actually guided really strong 1Q 14% growth at the midpoint, right? So, you know, when the demand is getting tight, definitely we're seeing pricing is holding more firm than before, which is normal. that we've seen overall. I think, again, Dio's focus is really more focusing on working with the customers to understand their true demands so we can actually provide a better support with them and build a long-term relationship with them to continue to expand our portfolio, right? So that's always been our focus and will continue to be our focus.
spk08: Thank you. Thank you. I'm showing no further questions. So with that, I'll turn the call back over to Chairman, President, and CEO, Dr. Liu, for any closing remarks.
spk01: Thank you for your participation.
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