Texas Instruments Incorporated

Good day, everyone, and welcome to today's Texas Instruments Q4 2020 Earnings Release Conference Call. At this time, I would like to turn things over to Mr. Dave Paul. Please go ahead, sir.

Good afternoon, and thank you for joining our fourth quarter and 2020 Earnings Conference Call. Rafael Lizardi, TI's Chief Financial Officer, is with me today. For any of you who missed the release, you can find it on our website at ti.com.ir. This call is being broadcast live over the web and can be accessed through our website. A replay will be available through the web. This call will include forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties that could cause TI's results to differ materially from management's current expectations. We encourage you to review the notice regarding forward-looking statements contained in the earnings release published today, as well as TI's most recent SEC filings for a more complete description. First, let me provide some information that's important for your calendars. We plan to hold a call to review our capital management on February 4th at 10 a.m. Central Time. Similar to what we've done in the past, Rafael and I will summarize our progress and provide some insight into our business and approach to capital allocation. For today's call, let me start by summarizing what Rafael and I will be reviewing. First, I'll start with a quick overview of the quarter. And next, I'll provide some insight into fourth quarter revenues results. And as we've done the past few quarters, we'll provide details by end market, including sequential performance, since it's more informative at this time. I'll also provide the annual summary of revenue breakdown by end markets. And lastly, Rafael will cover the financial results, some insight into one-time items, and our guidance for the first quarter of 2021. So starting with a quick overview of the fourth quarter. The company's revenue increased 7% sequentially and 22% year over year, driven by strong demand in automotive, personal electronics, and the industrial markets. Analog revenue grew 9% and embedded grew 11% sequentially. On a year-over-year basis, analog revenue grew 25%, and embedded grew 14%. Our other segment grew 4% from a year-ago quarter. Moving on, I'll now provide some insight into the fourth quarter revenue by end market. First, the automotive market continued its rebound following the second quarter bottom with 19% sequential growth and 25% year-over-year growth. The industrial market was up 7% sequentially and 16% from the year ago. The strength was seen across most market sectors. Personal electronics was up 11% sequentially and up 39% compared to a year ago. The strength was broad-based across sectors and customers within personal electronics. As expected, communications equipment was down 28% sequentially and down 8% from the year ago. Enterprise systems was down 2% sequentially and down 13% from a year ago. And lastly, as we do at the end of each calendar year, I'll describe our revenue by end market for 2020. We break our end markets into six categories that are grouped by their life cycles and market characteristics. The six end markets are industrial, automotive, personal electronics, which includes products such as mobile phones, PCs, tablets, and TVs, communications equipment, enterprise systems, and other, which is primarily calculators. As a percentage of revenue for the year, industrial was 37%, automotive 20%, personal electronics 27%, Communications equipment 8%, enterprise systems 6%, and other was 2%. Looking at the changes versus 2019, industrial increased one percentage point, automotive declined 1%, personal electronics increased four, communications equipment declined three, enterprise systems was even, and other declined one percentage point. In 2020, industrial and automotive combined made up 57% of TI's revenue, about even with last year, and up 42% in 2013. We see good opportunities in all of our markets, but we place additional strategic emphasis on industrial and automotive. Our industrial and automotive customers are increasingly turning to analog and embedded technology to make their end products smarter, safer, more connected, and more efficient. These trends have resulted and will continue to result in growing chip content per application, which will drive faster growth compared to our other markets. Rafael will now review profitability, capital management, and our outlook.

Thanks, Dave, and good afternoon, everyone. Gross profit in the quarter was $2.6 billion, or 65% of revenue. From a year ago, gross profit increased primarily due to higher revenues. Gross profit margin increased 230 basis points. Operating expenses in the quarter were $786 million, down 2% from a year ago and about as expected. On a trailing 12-month basis, operating expenses were 22% of revenue. For the year, we have invested $1.5 billion in R&D, an important element of our capital allocation. We're pleased with our disciplined process of allocating capital to R&D, which we believe will allow us to continue to grow our top line over the long term. Acquisition charges and non-cash expense were $47 million in the fourth quarter. Acquisition charges will remain at about this level through the third quarter of 2021. Operating profit was $1.8 billion, or 44% of revenue. Operating profit was up 45% from the year-ago quarter. Other income and expense was $162 million in the quarter due to a one-time benefit related to the signing of a multi-year royalty agreement. Net income in the fourth quarter was $1.7 billion, or $1.80 per share, which included a $0.16 benefit that was not in our prior outlook, primarily due to the royalty agreement we just mentioned. Let me now comment on our capital management results, starting with our cash generation. Cash flow from operations was $2.1 billion in the quarter. Capital expenditures were $212 million in the quarter. Free cash flow on a trailing 12-month basis was $5.5 billion, down 5% from a year ago. In the quarter, we paid $937 million in dividends. We have increased our dividend per share by 13%, marking our 17th year of dividend increases. We repurchased $15 million of our own stock for a total return of cash to owners in the fourth quarter of about a billion dollars. For the year 2020, we've returned $6 billion, consistent with our strategy to return all free cash flow to our owners. Over the same period, our dividend represented 62% of free cash flow, underscoring its sustainability. Our balance sheet remains strong with $6.6 billion of cash and short-term investments at the end of the fourth quarter. Total debt was $6.8 billion with a weighted average coupon of 2.77%. Inventory days were 123, down 21 days from a year ago, and down 14 days sequentially. Now let's look at some of these results for the year. In 2020, cash flow from operations was $6.1 billion. Capital expenditures were $649 million, or 4.5% of revenue. Free cash flow for 2020 was of $5.5 billion, or 38% of revenue. Our cash flow reflects the strength of our business model. As we have said, we believe that growth of free cash flow per share is the primary driver of long-term value. And after our creative investments in the business, the remaining cash will be returned over time via dividends and share repurchases. Over the last 12 months, we paid $3.4 billion in dividends and purchased $2.6 billion of our shares. reducing outstanding share count by 1.4% in 2020. Turning to our outlook for the first quarter, we expect TR revenue in the range of $3.79 to $4.11 billion, and earnings per share to be in the range of $1.44 to $1.66. We expect our 2021 annual operating tax rate to continue to be about 14%, and our effective tax rate about a percentage lower than that. a percentage point lower than that. In closing, we will stay focused in the areas that add value in the long term. We continue to invest in our competitive advantages, which are manufacturing and technology, broad product portfolio, reach of our channels, and diverse and long-lived positions. We will continue to strengthen these advantages through disciplined capital allocation and by focusing on the best market opportunities, which we believe will enable us to continue to improve and deliver free cash flow per share growth over the long term. With that, let me turn it back to Dave.

Okay. Thanks, Rafael. Operator, you can now open the lines for questions. And in order to provide as many as possible an opportunity to ask a question, please limit yourself to a single question. And after our response, we'll provide you an opportunity for an additional follow-up. Operator?

Thank you. And if you do have a question, that will be Star 1 at this time. We'll go first today to John Pitzer with Credit Suisse.

Yeah, good afternoon, guys. Thanks for letting me ask the questions. Congratulations on the solid results. David Raphael, I'm wondering if you could talk a little bit about just the current demand backdrop. I mean, clearly we're hearing about lead time stretching out in the semi-industry. Many of your peers are talking about raising pricing. I guess specifically to you guys, can you help us understand what your lead times are doing, what you guys are thinking about doing around pricing, and I guess more importantly, Given your inventory strategy and the fact that you ran your fabs a little bit fuller last year, do you think the current results represent your ability to gain some incremental share as some of your peers just are having a harder time supplying customers right now?

Yeah, John, let me take – you covered a lot of ground with that first question, so let me take some pieces of it. Raphael, if you want to add anything, and if I miss any, John, we'll give you a chance for the follow-up, but – On the first one, certainly we've read the same reports and seen the same releases from our peers on the supply constraints and raising prices. The short answer of we doing that, the short answer is no. And I think that that brings us to one of our foundational competitive advantages is manufacturing and technology. And that really provides two benefits. One is the obvious, which is lower cost, but the second is just greater control of our supply chain. So it's really times like this and really throughout 2020 that that greater control of your supply chains really becomes a great advantage.

Yeah, I'll just add on the inventory angle of your question, John. Remember, our long-term objective for inventory, as we have talked about in many capital management calls, is to maintain high levels of customer service while we minimize inventory obsolescence. Now, part of the reason we can do that is that we are strategically positioned, the way we run the company, our business model, and competitive advantages, where our parts are mainly catalog parts that sell into industrial and automotive, our focus is on those. with very long product lifecycle, so we can build inventory ahead of demand. We can position that inventory well. That served us well in 2020, and will continue to serve us well from a business model standpoint in order to maintain those high levels of customer service where customers.

So I think we got most of the pieces. John, do you have a follow-up or other pieces we didn't touch on?

Just a quick follow-up, Rafael. Rafael, I know you don't specifically guide gross margins, but I was wondering if you'd give us – some parameters around OPEX for the next couple of quarters. I mean, we're heading into strong cyclical recovery and revenue off of what was kind of an unusual expense here last year with COVID. And so as we think about the March quarter, can you help us kind of frame the period costs around STNA and R&D we should be thinking about? And if you want to give us a gross margin target, that'd be great. But I know you tend to avoid that.

Yeah, you know, on a gross margin, like we have said before, just think of 70% to 75% fall through. So, you know, you figure out what revenue, incremental revenue you want to play in and just fold that through at 70% to 75%. You'll get a good place over the long term, right? Any one quarter can be a little higher, a little lower, right? You know, on OPEX, you know, we talked about we can operate between 20% and 25%. The last three or four years, we have been between 21% and 22%. Pretty much, right? So I don't mean to narrow that range, but that's where we've been running, and I would expect to stay somewhere in that neighborhood.

Between 20 and 25. Yeah, between 20 and 25. Right, right. Yeah. Okay. Thank you, John. And we'll go to the next caller, please.

That will come from Vivek Arya with Bank of America.

Thank you for taking my question, and congratulations on the strong growth. I just wanted to follow up on the demand question. And I'm curious, even if you are able to supply because of your very strong strategic capacity, do you think your customers, especially on the automotive side, might be constrained with other parts of the bill of materials that they get from others and maybe those become bottlenecks? I'm just trying to reconcile the very strong demand backdrop that we are hearing from your results and your outlook versus all the news around auto supply chains facing more constraints? What is the true sense of supply and demand across your customer base? It would be very helpful to hear your views.

Sure, Vivek. Yeah, I think that's a great question. We see the same reports that you're seeing. And I think the best way to maybe describe what we're seeing in the automotive market is just you know, a just-in-time supply chain that's, you know, restarting from essentially a full stop that happened in second quarter. And, you know, just as a reminder, what we saw in third quarter was a 75% sequential increase, you know, followed by this last quarter with a 20% sequential increase. What I'll say is that those reports are fairly widespread, but we aren't seeing demand signals that would show us that there's anything that's consistent with any of those constraints that you're pointing out or that are in press releases. Do you have a follow-on?

Yeah, thank you, Dave. Good to see the growth in the embedded segment. And I know you made some changes in that business last year. Do you think we will start to see the benefits of that in 2021? Because they also tend to be somewhat stickier markets. So I'm just curious if You could give us an update on, you know, what are you doing specifically to regain market share? And do you think we can start to see your embedded business start to grow in line with your analog business this year? Thank you.

Yeah, I'll give you a few on those ones. So first, you know, we're pleased with the progress we're seeing in embedded. Our plan has called to first stabilize the business and then start to prove that we can resume long-term consistent growth. We're leveraging our competitive advantages, particularly building a broad-based, more diverse product portfolio that can then deliver long-term sustainable growth. I think it was in second quarter of 20 where we announced where we had a restructuring charge related to embedded, and we reallocated resources. Some product lines increased investments. Some we decreased. Others stayed about the same. And we're seeing the beginning of destabilization on that front. Okay. Thank you, Vivek. I'll go to the next caller, please.

We'll hear next from Craig Hettenbach with Morgan Stanley.

Yes, thank you. Dave, just following up on your comments around autos and particularly the just-in-time inventory angle, you know, certainly 2020 was a challenging year for the supply chain, and we're dealing with some of those repercussions now. Do you think you'll see some changes to that over time in terms of how they operate from an inventory perspective or something that might be difficult the next couple of quarters, but kind of gets back to that just in time?

Yeah, Craig, you know, I don't want to speak for our customers or how they're managing their inventories. I think as you've seen us and how we've managed our business and our operations, You know, we just work very hard to try to have capacity in place to support our customers' needs. You saw the decisions that we made earlier in the year to try to keep high service and optionality in place. And, you know, we'll just continue to try to support our customers' needs, you know, whatever their supply chains look like. So, and whether that's in the automotive market or the other market. So, you know, we just, we try to make them happy. That's what we're trying to do. So you have a follow-on?

I do, thanks. And just looking at analog up 25% year over year, I know that comes off of a difficult year and coming out of a down cycle. And so that's some of it, but just curious at a high level just to get your thoughts of just the type of strength you're seeing and how you feel about what the demand is out there.

Can you clarify that a little bit for me, Craig, just so I make sure I answer the right question?

Yeah, so just with the analog business up 25% year over year, you know, that's coming off of an easy comp, if you will, coming out of the down cycle. So I think that's some of it, but just Curious, I know in some of these calls you've talked about just your view of just, hey, are supply and demand in equilibrium or how you feel like demand is relative to how your business is trending right now?

Oh, well, yeah. Yeah, I think that when you look at, you know, where that business is, you know, I think that we've just come, you know, you know, through a, you know, from cyclical indicators and those types of things. You know, you'd even have to go back to 2018 when the industry had reached a cyclical peak. Then you throw in and sprinkle on top COVID-19. And it was really, you know, at the beginning of or at the end of last year and the beginning of 2020 that we had begun to see signs of stabilization before COVID had hit. So, you know, inventories really weren't a problem at that point in time, and we had said at that point in time that our shipments were beginning to reflect what customers were beginning to ship overall. Again, I think that what we are shipping today is reflective of what customers are asking us to ship. We have a good availability of product because of the decisions that we've made, and our lead times have remained stable. That doesn't mean, of course, that we don't have hotspots that we're working, and we always have hotspots. But, you know, that's kind of where we are today. Thank you, Craig. And we'll go to the next caller, please.

We'll hear next from Harlan Sir with J.P. Morgan.

Good afternoon. Congratulations on the strong execution. You know, amidst the strong demand environment, as we all know, foundry capacity is pretty tight, both leading edge and lagging edge. And I know that TI outsources about 20% of its weight requirements, most of it with your embedded products, MPUs, MCUs. So because of the foundry tightness, is the team also somewhat constrained on your embedded products, either Q4 or here in Q1? And also the same thing from an assembly test perspective, where I think about 40% of your assembly and test requirements are outsourced to the subcons. Is this constraining maybe some of your shipments near term?

You know, at a high level, we have long-term agreements with these suppliers, like we do with other suppliers. Even though we only outsource a relatively small part of our loadings, we're still being a big company. That's still a good amount of loadings, right? So we still get some decent leverage. So, you know, we're seeing some hotspots here and there, but to the largest degree, we're getting what we need.

Yeah. And I would say, you know, having 80% of our wafers sourced internally, almost all of our analog sourced internally, and, you know, that is a great advantage for us. So, overall, as we've talked about, you know, lead times have remained stable. So, that has been a huge advantage for us. Do you have a follow-on, Harlan?

Okay. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, thanks for the insights there. Can you guys just provide us with the shipment trends quarter over quarter, year over year by geography? I know it's shipped to location, but I think it's still useful to kind of understand the breadth of the overall demand profile you guys are seeing.

Sure. So in the quarter, and thank you for the preamble there, so I won't repeat it. But a year ago, Asia was up and all of the other regions were either flat or down. and sequentially all the regions except for the U.S. were up. And just as another point of color on where we ship our products, 90% of our revenues come from shipments outside of the U.S., and we've got about 20% of our revenues that are based by customers in China. Just a little bit more color on the comment that you made there earlier. So thank you, Harlan. And we'll go to the next caller, please.

We'll hear now from Timothy Arcuri with UBS.

Thanks a lot. Rafael, I guess I asked this question last quarter, too, but you, again, bought back next to no stock. And I totally get that you were running ahead of the plan in the first half, and you were certainly ahead of 100% for the full year. But you also have a pretty strong intrinsic value model for the share repo, and you've been pretty good at buying back the stock. So I guess maybe I'll ask you again to just sort of comment on that. Is there anything that we can read into that, given that it's the second quarter in a row?

You know, what I would tell you is that as we talk about during capital management, our goal is to return all free cash flow to the owners of the company. We generated in 2020 $5.5 billion of free cash flow, and we generated $6 billion of free cash flow. So clearly, well above the cash flow generation.

Okay. And then I guess, yeah, yeah, yeah, I do. I guess, can you give us an update on the 300 millimeter, the new fab and sort of the timing around that? And I guess on that, can you qualify for some of these subsidies coming from the government or is that mostly going to be leading edge? Thanks.

Yeah, sure. So the update on the factory is the same. Nothing has changed as far as our expectation. The new factory is being built. We expect it to be completed in 2022, so next year. In fact, we should have some level of output in the second half of next year. So that's all going as per plan. When it's fully completed, It has the potential for revenue of about $5 billion per year. On your question on the incentives, a lot of that remains to be seen. There are two legislations. One that was approved but was not funded. Another one hasn't been approved. The CHIPS, I think, is the one that hasn't been approved. But the one that was approved is not even funded. And there's a lot of... uncertainties on that depending on how that comes out. So when that comes out, we'll look at it and we'll decide if it makes sense for us. But, you know, at the biggest, at the highest level, we think, you know, semiconductor is a foundational technology and anything that the government can do to strengthen that and to keep us at a level playing field, companies in the United States versus other countries would be a good thing.

Okay, thank you, Tim. And I think we've got time for one more caller, please.

That will come from Tori Spanberg with Stifle.

Yes, thank you, and congratulations on the results. First question for Rafael. I typically wouldn't ask you this because I know you get a lot of these, but the royalty this quarter was pretty material, $162 million. Can you maybe add any color on that, and, you know, should we expect, you know, sizable things like that going forward as well?

Yeah, so it was about, inside that 162, it was most of that 162. And we recognize it based on accounting rules. The cash actually comes in not quite like that. It comes in over time. But it's just a licensing agreement. We've had those for many years. They have become the minimums in the at the highest level, frankly. So, you know, I don't expect that to change. You know, from a cash standpoint, it's about $100 million a year. So, you know, from the revenue or the income recognition standpoint, sometimes they come in as pops, that's what you saw. But their cash, which is really what matters, is more stable than that. And again, like I said, it's about $100 million a year, and I don't expect that to change much. You have a follow-up, Tori?

Yes, thank you, Dave. So I know your long-term goal is to grow CapEx at 6%, well, to spend 6% of your revenues in CapEx. I think last year you said it was 4.5%. You know, was there sort of any COVID-related issues that slowed things down? And as we look at 2021, do you think it will come in close to that range, sort of 6%?

Yeah, so I'll go ahead and take that. So, yes, our guidance is 6%. Our guidance continues to be 6%. CAPEX has percent of revenue. That's a long-term guidance, includes everything that goes into CAPEX as far as building and equipment. Now, of course, that number can fluctuate, right? Like you pointed out, it just fluctuated down in 2020 to 4.5. So, you know, I wouldn't be surprised if it's a little higher than 6% for a year or two. But for your model, I would suggest you stick with 6% out into the future. It's simpler that way, and it gets the point across. Thank you so much. Thank you, Tori. That concludes the call, so let me finish with a few comments on key items that we believe deeply. First, we run the company with the mindset of being a long-term owner. We believe that growth of free cash flow per share is the primary driver of long-term value. Our ambitions and values are integral to how we build TI stronger. When we're successful in achieving these ambitions, our employees, customers, communities, and shareholders all win.

Okay, and thank you all for joining us. A replay of this call will be available shortly on our website. Good evening.

And again, that will conclude today's conference. Thank you all for joining us.