Himax Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ:HIMX)

Thursday, February 13, 2020 | Web News
Fourth Quarter 2019 Financial Results The Company recorded net revenues of $174.9 million, an increase of 6.5% sequentially and a decrease of...
Tuesday, January 7, 2020 | Web News
TAINAN, Taiwan, Jan. 07, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Himax Technologies, Inc. (HIMX) (“Himax&#...
Thursday, November 7, 2019 | Web News
Third Quarter 2019 Financial Results Net revenues of $164.3 million, a decrease of 3.0% sequentially and a decrease of 12.8%...
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Fourth Quarter 2017 Financial Results

  • The fourth quarter revenues of $181.1 million represented a decrease of 8.1% sequentially and a decrease of 11.0% year-over-year.
  • Non-GAAP net income for 2017 was $34.3 million, or 19.9 cents per diluted ADS, down 42.7% year-over-year

“The Company’s 2017 fourth quarter revenues, gross margin, GAAP and non-GAAP earnings per diluted ADS all met the guidance. Despite the decline in the first half of 2017, Himax’s driver ICs segment experienced a strong recovery in the second half from the first half, and WLO business in the non-driver segments hit inflection in the third quarter when the Company began mass shipment to an anchor customer.  Looking into 2018, the Company’s growth will come from China panel makers’ increase in capacity for large panel segment, in-cell TDDI for smartphone, driver ICs for automotive applications, and increasing WLO revenue as well as commencement of 3D sensing total solution shipment. We believe 3D sensing will be our biggest long term growth engine and, for 2018, a major contributor to both revenue and profits, consequently creating a more favorable product mix for Himax starting the second half of 2018. We expect significant revenue and profit growth this year,” said Mr. Jordan Wu, President and Chief Executive Officer of Himax.

“Himax jointly with Qualcomm announced SLiM™, our structure light based 3D sensing total solution, will target Android based smartphone last August. The solution brings together Qualcomm’s industry leading 3D algorithm with Himax’s cutting-edge design and manufacturing capabilities in optics and NIR sensors as well as unique know-how in 3D sensing system integration. It represents a very high barrier of entry for any potential competition and a much higher ASP and profit margin for us. The Qualcomm/Himax 3D sensing solution is by far the highest quality 3D sensing total solution available for the Android market right now. It has the industry’s best performance in all of dimension, 3D depth accuracy, indoor/outdoor sensitivity and power consumption. It passes the toughest eye safety standards with a proprietary glass broken detection mechanism to safeguard the user from any potential harm.  Furthermore, our SLiM™ is the only solution to offer face recognition for secure online payment, a must-have feature for high end smartphones. Himax is working with multiple tier-1 smartphone makers, expecting to launch 3D sensing on their premium smartphones starting the first half of 2018. SLiM™ solution will be ready for mass production and shipment by the end of the first quarter 2018 with an initial capacity of 2 million units per month. Given that SLiM™ is a highly integrated solution with ASPs much higher than those of individual components, by the time we start making shipment, it will be a major growth contributor to our top and bottom lines,” added Mr. Wu.

Mr. Wu continued, “In an attempt to accelerate the adoption of 3D sensing for Android phones, in addition to SLiM™, Himax is also working on stereoscopic type 3D sensing as a lower cost alternative. Unlike SLiM™ which utilizes structure light to generate 3D, stereoscopic type uses two cameras to replicate 3D vision in nature, augmented by coded light for image depth enhancement. Both types of solutions offered by Himax operate on active NIR light source with NIR sensors, thus working well under extreme brightness or total darkness. For 3D sensing purposes, structure light approach offers better depth precision than stereoscopic type but the cost is also higher. By introducing stereoscopic 3D sensing, Himax aims to bring down the cost of 3D sensing so that it can be afforded by mass market smartphone models. We are pleased to report that development of stereoscopic 3D sensing total solution for face recognition and 3D features has been under way. We plan to be mass production and shipment ready by the fourth quarter 2018 to meet customers’ launch timetable. Similar to our experience in SLiM™, we are working with some of the most prominent ecosystem partners in developing our stereoscopic 3D total solution. We are very excited that this new development will enable us to expand our 3D total solution portfolio to the high volume smartphone market in addition to the premium to high-end models. While lower cost compared to structure light, stereoscopic 3D will still represent a much higher ASP and better gross margin potential for us.”

“To fulfill strong demands from the WLO anchor customer and 3D sensing total solution Android smartphone OEMs, we increased Phase I capex by $25 million from $80 million to $105 million primarily for enhanced manufacturing automation to achieve higher product yields and better production efficiency to meet SLiM™ shipment demand from Android OEMs’ 3D sensing smartphone launches in 1H18 and acceleration in 2H18.  We believe a Phase II capex will soon be required for additional capacity. We are still gathering customers’ input and finalizing technical details and will formally announce the Phase II expansion as soon as the plan is finalized,” further said Mr. Wu.

Web site: http://www.himax.com.tw

Last updated February 13, 2018