VIA optronics AG

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. I am Emma, your core school operator. Welcome and thank you for joining Via Optronics' first quarter 2021 financial results conference call. Throughout today's recorded presentation, all participants will be in a listen-only mode. The presentation will be followed by a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, you may press star followed by one on your touchstone telephone. Press the star key followed by zero for operator assistance. I would now like to turn the conference over to Cassidy Fuller, Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Good morning and welcome to VIA Optronics first quarter 2021 financial results conference call. I'm Cassidy Fuller, Investor Relations for VIA Optronics. Joining me on the call today will be Juergen Eichner, VIA's Chief Executive Officer and Daniel Juergens, VIA's Chief Financial Officer. Today's call is being webcast live and will be archived on the investor relations section of VIA's website at via-optronics.com, where the company's earnings press release is currently available. Certain matters we will be discussing today, including the business outlook and financial projections for the second quarter and full year 2021, are forward-looking statements. Such statements are subject to the risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in the forward-looking statements. These risks and uncertainties are discussed in our documents filed with the SEC, including our Form 20F, which was filed with the SEC on April 29th. Please note that any forward-looking statements that are made on this call are based on assumptions as of today, and the company undertakes no obligation to update these statements as a result of new information or future events. And with that, I'd like to turn the call over to Juergen.

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. First of all, I would like to provide a brief overview of our first quarter 2021 results. I will then discuss our key achievements and notable awards in the quarter. Before I turn over the call to Daniel Juergens, our CFO, who will review our first quarter 2021 financial performance in more detail and provide our outlook for the second quarter of 2021 and the full year. As we discussed last quarter, we have been focused on growing our footprint and revenue in the automotive segment, translating the new design wins during this quarter, extending our visibility and backlog for the following years. On top of the automotive business, we could convert more design wins in the revenue, and as a result, we are pleased to report that we achieved our first quarter revenue of 41%. 0.3 million representing a year-over-year growth of 60.7 percent following our plan we continued to diversify our revenue and increase our sales in the automotive and industrial end markets we continue to see a large opportunity in both sectors as the total number of displays with features that we are providing including cameras and the use of glass as a design element is steadily increasing As we noted on our prior earnings call, we increased our spending in critical areas of R&D and accelerated hiring to take advantage of the opportunity to engage in the new projects with existing and new customers. Despite the current labor market, we have been able to secure critical talent at a much faster rate than initially planned. These employees are being matched with the new design in opportunities that we have with our new customers. Simultaneously, we are aggressively ramping up production to meet the increased demand from our customers, particularly with our automotive clients. Many of these hires were to support our new manufacturing facility in Germany, which we anticipate will be completed next quarter. As you know, there's a global shortage in the semiconductors market and other critical components. The combination of higher input costs, which could not be immediately offset and passed on to our customers, and our increased hiring had a dampening effect on our EPDA for the current quarter. As a result, EPDA remained flat compared to the prior year period at 1.3 million euros. We consider this impact to be short-term in nature, and we are hopeful that the component shortage will ease over the next few quarters. Additionally, to minimize the financial impact, we have taken initiatives to pass corresponding cost increases to our customers. Now I'd like to turn to some of our key achievements and awards in the first quarter. Total unit shipments, which include display sensors and cameras, rose 35% over the prior year period. We had another design win with a U.S. electric vehicle manufacturer for surround-view camera system. We had multiple design wins in the industrial and consumer sector, including four awards in the commercial segment alone. The commercial segment covers notebooks and tablets used for outdoor applications, like in the military field. Our partnership with Corning continues to proceed well. We reached all our milestones last year, and it looks like we will overachieve our expectations this year as well. Overall, the cooperation has led to rapid adoption of the cold form technology, bringing us into a leadership position. As of today, we have five design wins for our cold form technology, including one new design win that we secured in the first quarter with the Chinese automaker for dual display module for high-end EV vehicle. All our cold form design wins have included special accessories. cover lens shapes as well as multiple displays behind the cover glass, following the overall trend of integrating dashboard electronics behind one piece of glass instead of individual displays in the cockpit. We have a strong track record in the EV market with nearly 10 EV customers. At some customers, we have to sign with multiple models. This is in Europe as well as in Asia and in the US. We believe our strategic shift to focus on the automotive market, especially e-vehicles, and the industrial market has proved to be very successful so far. We will continue pursuing these opportunities and will push for higher system level awards with our increased investment in R&D capacity. We are well positioned to take advantage of and encouraged by the anticipated growth in the EV market, which is predicted to grow 50 to 70% annually. In summary, we are reiterating our full year guidance for at least 20% year-over-year revenue growth, we believe that the overall market opportunity represents an even higher potential. Looking ahead, we will continue to execute on our strategy of increasing our sales and order in industrial markets, leveraging our sensor and camera capabilities to deliver system solutions, while expanding the number and size of our projects within our existing customer base. We will also evaluate M&A opportunities that would complement our current technology portfolio or add capacity. We continue to believe that the quality of our growing pipeline combined with the good visibility from increased auto industrial projects positions as well for continued growth in 2021 and beyond. With that, I will now turn over to Daniel Juergens to discuss our financial results and outlook in more detail. Daniel.