Onto Innovation Inc
NYSE:ONTO
Earnings Call Analysis
Q4-2023 Analysis
Onto Innovation Inc
Onto Innovation celebrated a robust fourth quarter, outshining guidance predictions, driven by surging demand for their Dragonfly Inspection Systems employed in AI applications packaging. These systems, vital for memory and logic device production, promise continued heightened demand into the next quarter, mirrored by the enhanced revenue forecast. Operational refinements have begun to pay off, elevating cash from operations to over 28% and signaling imminent margin improvements to realign with their long-term business model by year-end.
In a remarkable leap, Onto Innovation reported a 65% quarterly revenue growth in specialty devices and advanced packaging markets, escalating from $220 million in 2020 to over $500 million in 2023. The company's strong partnerships with premier semiconductor manufacturers, capitalizing on advanced packaging technologies, have fueled this growth. This trajectory is anticipated to steepen as the complexity of chip architectures increases, necessitating more of Onto's Dragonfly inspection and new metrology applications.
Onto Innovation shipped notable metrology systems and lithography equipment during the quarter, reinforcing its comprehensive offering. The introduction of the Firefly G3 panel inspection system, equipped with the Dragonfly G3's metrology prowess, demonstrates the company's commitment to fortifying its customer's productivity and yield targets, specifically in cutting-edge packaging technologies.
Despite a revenue decline in the advanced nodes segment, Onto Innovation remains optimistic about a turnaround by early 2025, as evidenced by $20 million in recent orders for Atlas and Iris system deliveries slated for the first half of 2024. This is seen as a harbinger of a reinforced market position during forthcoming volume ramps.
Onto Innovation's fourth-quarter revenue hit $219 million, climbing by 6% compared to the third quarter and also peaked within 2023, surpassing their guidance range. Concurrently, the company's earnings per share (EPS) surged by 10% sequentially to $1.06.
The company is fixated on inventory optimization, seeking to maintain top-tier cash flow performance, with accounts receivable amassing to $227 million. Onto projects a Q1 revenue between $215 million and $230 million, with gross margins between 51% to 53%. Operating expenses are expected to increase due to the annual reset of payroll taxes and other compensation elements.
The inauguration of the year is marked by robust demand for Dragonfly inspection systems, poised to triple Q1 revenue over the previous year, bolstering AI device production. Despite the current baseline in advanced node spending, a resurgence is anticipated throughout the year.
Onto Innovation's revenue streams depict a transition, with advanced nodes revenue diminishing by 30% over Q3 to $18 million, thus contributing to 8% of total revenue. Conversely, specialty device and advanced packaging segments soared to $158 million, up by 17% over Q3 and securing 72% of revenue. Meanwhile, software and services dipped by 8% over Q3 but still accounted for 20% of revenue.
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Good day and welcome to the Onto Innovation Fourth Quarter and Full Year Earnings Release Conference Call. Today's conference is being recorded. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Mike Sheaffer, Investor Relations. Please go ahead.
Thank you, Rachel, and good afternoon, everyone. Onto Innovation issued its 2023 fourth quarter and full year financial results this afternoon shortly after the market closed. If you did not receive a copy of the release, please refer to the company's website where a copy of the release is posted.
Joining us on the call today are Michael Plisinski, Chief Executive Officer; and Mark Slicer, Chief Financial Officer. I would like to remind you that the statements made by management on this call will contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of federal securities laws. Those statements are subject to rate changes, risks and uncertainties that can cause actual results to vary materially. For more information regarding the risk factors that impact on to Innovation's results, I would encourage you to review our earnings release and our SEC filings. Onto Innovation does not undertake the obligation to update these forward-looking statements in light of new information or future events. Today's discussion financial results will be presented on a non-GAAP financial basis unless otherwise specified. As a reminder, a detailed reconciliation between GAAP and non-GAAP results can be found in today's earnings release.
I will now go ahead and turn the call over to our CEO, Mike Plisinski. Mike?
Thank you, Mike. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining our call today. As you may have already seen, Onto Innovation had a strong end to the year with fourth quarter revenues exceeding the high end of our guidance range. This was primarily due to stronger than projected demand for Dragonfly inspection systems to support packaging of memory and logic devices for AI applications. We expect this demand to continue as is reflected in our increased guidance range for the first quarter.
Financially, we're starting to benefit from tighter controls and operational efficiencies, which resulted in generating over 28% of cash from operations in the quarter, while still supporting the multi-quarter surge in demand for the Dragonfly systems. We expect improvements in margins will soon follow, bringing us back in line with our long-term operating model by end of the year.
So let's begin with our specialty and advanced packaging customers where the boom and AI spending lifted revenue from this market by 17% over the prior quarter and set a consecutive quarterly record. In fact, since the start of the year, quarterly revenue for the specialty device and advanced packaging markets has grown 65%. While on an annual basis, revenues have risen from $220 million in 2020 to just over $500 million in 2023. Several markets have contributed to this growth, including power semiconductors, where demand for our solutions increased 50% this year. but the greatest, the most consistent growth has come from our long-standing partnerships with the top semiconductor manufacturers and they're increasing investments in advanced packaging, including chiplet and 3D memory architectures. Over the next several years, as these architectures increasing complexity and interconnect density, we expect additional process steps to create the need for more Dragonfly inspection and new metrology applications. For example, in the fourth quarter, we shipped several of our newer front-end metrology systems, including echo films and Aspect metrology to leading manufacturers and OSATs for emerging packaging applications.
Another highlight for the quarter was our lithography team shipping 3 systems as planned to 2 customers supporting mobile and high-performance compute applications. To complement our lithography tools and provide additional technology for leading-edge panel manufacturers, we announced the availability of our latest Firefly G3 panel inspection system in the fourth quarter. The third generation of -- this third generation of our Firefly panel tool now includes all of the metrology capabilities of the Dragonfly G3 and shares the same high-performance optical design. This tool's inspection and metrology capability is being used to qualify glass panel substrates as well as more traditional panels. It is fully integrated with our software solutions, which we expect will help our customers accelerate their ability to reach productivity and yield targets, especially for the next generation of heterogeneous packaging technologies.
Turning briefly to the advanced nodes. As we projected, revenue from these customers declined in the fourth quarter, and we believe it has finally reached the bottom. Consistent with historical performance, the revenue was split nearly equally between DRAM, NAND and logic. Although revenue was light overall, we continue to receive early orders for gate all around pilot lines. And in the fourth quarter, we received approximately $20 million of additional orders for Atlas and Iris systems for deliveries in the first half of 2024. We're optimistic that these placements indicate a strengthening of our position when volume ramps occur likely in early 2025.
Now I'll turn the call over to Mark to discuss our financial performance in the fourth quarter and guidance for the first quarter.
Thanks, Mike, and good afternoon, everyone. As Mike highlighted, we closed the fourth quarter with revenue of $219 million, up 6% versus the third quarter and a revenue milestone for us in 2023, exceeding our guidance range while achieving a high mark for revenue within the year. Fourth quarter EPS increased 10% sequentially to $1.06, exceeding the midpoint of our guidance but constrained by the decline in our high-margin advanced nodes business and lower services parts revenue within the quarter. Looking at the quarterly revenue by markets, advanced nodes, which had revenue of $18 million declined 30% over Q3 and represents 8% of revenue. Specialty device and Advanced Packaging with record revenue of $158 million, increased 17% over Q3 and represents 72% of revenue. Software and services with revenue of $42 million declined 8% over Q3, while representing 20% of revenue. Fourth quarter operating expenses were $56 million, at the low end of our guidance range of $56 million to $58 million. We continue to actively manage costs while realizing the benefits of our cost reduction initiatives put in place earlier in the year and driving our OpEx run rate back to Q4 '21 levels. Our operating income of $56 million was 26% of revenue for the fourth quarter compared to 24% for the third quarter. Our net income for the fourth quarter was $52 million, 24% of revenue versus 23% for the third quarter. Both operating income and net income performance versus the third quarter highlight our improving operating leverage within the year.
Now moving to the balance sheet. We ended the fourth quarter with cash and short-term investments of $698 million, an increase of $150 million from the beginning of the year, with operating cash flow of $62 million within the quarter, representing 28% of revenue and achieving a quarterly record for operating cash flow. Inventory ended the quarter at $328 million, a decrease of $18 million from Q3, representing a 14% reduction of our days inventory outstanding. Even with ramping Dragonfly production, requiring us to procure long lead time items, we do expect further reduction in inventory days outstanding as inventory optimization remains a critical working capital focus area to drive consistent cash flow performance levels exceeding 20% of revenue. Accounts receivable increased $17 million to $227 million in the quarter, and our days sales outstanding increased 2 days to 94 days.
Now turning to our outlook for Q1. We currently expect our revenue for the first quarter to be between $215 million and $230 million. We expect gross margins will be between 51% to 53% as we continue to experience historical lows in the advanced nodes business and only the initial phases of our supply chain reductions taking hold in the quarter. For operating expenses, we expect to be between $58 million to $60 million, higher versus Q4, primarily due to the annual reset of payroll taxes and other compensation components. For the full year '24, we expect our effective tax rate to be between 14% to 16%, which does not assume any impact for potential tax legislative changes that may occur during the year. We expect our diluted share count for Q1 to be approximately 49.8 million shares. Based on these assumptions, we anticipate our non-GAAP earnings for the first quarter to be between $1 per share to $1.20 per share. Looking forward to 2024, critical focus area for us continues to be our targeted programs for operating improvements necessary to return to our operating model.
And with that, I will turn it back to Mike for additional insights into Q1 and 2024. Mike?
Thank you, Mark. Our guidance range for the first quarter reflects continued strong demand for our Dragonfly inspection systems to support increases in AI device production. By way of comparison, our inspection business in the first quarter is expected to be 3x larger than Q1 of last year before the generative AI and LLM started to hit the market. In contrast, advanced node spending is still at historical lows, but we do expect advanced node revenue to pick up a bit in the first quarter and gain some strength through the year. Broadly speaking, we see advanced packaging, especially for the leading edge AI devices will be a healthy multiyear driver for our business. We're encouraged by the recent comments from TSMC during their earnings call, in which they are forecasting a 50% CAGR through 2027 for the AI application processors. In addition, they also are forecasting greatly increased silicon content for networking and edge devices that will begin adding neuroprocessing and phones and PCs. Gartner provided a similar outlook with their expectation that AI semiconductor revenue is forecast to be about $140 billion by 2027, a more subdued 27% CAGR. What we find exciting is that in addition to the growth rate for AI devices, we expect an increase in capital intensity of process control for those devices as manufacturers increase stacks of DRAM, implement denser and smaller interconnects and include a greater number of chiplets per package. The increase in complexity will require greater emphasis on the interconnect quality and the number of steps will increase with layers and complexity. By continuing our partnerships with leaders in this market, we're developing the technologies they require to maintain their pace of innovation and meet production yield targets. We're only in the dawn of the AI era and the outlook is very exciting. We expect AI Packaging to be a strong driver for 2024 with our backyard -- backlog already extending into the second half of the year. However, the timing and magnitude of the recovery in advanced nodes remains uncertain even as we see tool utilizations improving and incremental technology buys increasing. Based on the strength of our AI packaging business and gradual recovery in the advanced nodes, we project low double-digit growth for the year.
With that, Rachel, we'll open the call to your questions. Rachel?
[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from Vedvati Shrotre with Jefferies.
The first one is -- so last couple of quarters, you've talked about multiple orders, I think, going to $30 million for your packaging revenues. Could you talk about the order momentum you're seeing? Is that kind of the trajectory that you -- that continues as we go into next quarter?
Going into the next 2 -- so the backlog is there to -- yes. So going into the next 2 quarters will be strong and that's reflected in the increase in our guidance. Second half, as we mentioned, we've got some backlog that extends all the way through the second half, not at the same level, but it's still early, and we'll see where our customers start to increase as they come out of Chinese Lunar New Year.
Right. And so my second -- if I may ask a follow-up. So you talked about the front-end metrology tools starting to get us in packaging application. Could you compare and contrast what kind of use cases there are for front-end tools versus what Dragonfly did on the inspection side?
It's different types of metrologies and more complex. So in some cases, we could be looking for voids in metals or we're looking for metal thicknesses that the Dragonfly doesn't do as well as the echo product line does. And there's different applications for that, whether you're looking at TSVs or bump -- the creation of the metal stacking of bumps and bond pads, things like that. There are some other applications as well, but that gives you an idea.
Next question comes from the line of Craig Ellis with B. Riley Securities.
Mike, I wanted to start with a couple with you. One, great to see the strength in Advanced Packaging and Dragonfly. The question is this, given -- given how robustly that business has ramped up 3x year-over-year, can you just talk about some of the manufacturing and fulfillment issues? How are you doing on capacity? Any constraints, et cetera, as you look to meet demand that exists through your first quarter guide and then just the further momentum in the second quarter?
That's a good question, and it's a good concern, but I'm actually very impressed with our team. They've done a great job working with our suppliers, working internally moving resources from one factory to another, for instance, from California to Minnesota in order to ensure that we're able to meet the ramp with the level of quality that customers expect from us. and even increase it again. So we talked about Q4. We're increasing the capacity again for the first half of the year as well. So, so far, the team has done an outstanding job working through everything, and we don't see -- we're overcoming every hiccup that we see.
Yes. Got it. Okay. Good to hear. And then secondly, you did mention that you expect some pretty modest advanced nodes pick up in the first half of the year on that to accelerate. Can you talk about which end use areas are the first to see increased tool shipment activity? And how would you expect the other end use areas to layer on as you go through the second half and into next year?
Yes. I think it's mostly logic and then followed by DRAM. And again, these are incremental improvements. I think there's still lot -- as I mentioned, still a lot of uncertainty is when we'll see real volumes picking up, maybe in the second half or maybe into early next year. But we're definitely seeing some incremental improvements. We've even seen some incremental improvements in NAND, but that will be a little bit further out.
Sure. And then if I could just sneak one in for Mark? Mark, nice to hear that the efficiency enhancements are benefiting things like cash generation with record operating cash flow. The question is on impact to gross margin. You indicated you expect to be back in the target model by the end of the year. What's the -- what's the contour for getting there? Is it fairly linear from here? Or is it really more back-end loaded with a little help from advanced nodes?
Yes, Craig. Certainly, as we look at the model for the year, I mean, our goal is certainly to show quarter-over-quarter improvement in gross margin. It really comes down to just executing similar to what we did with operating expenses and working capital management, just executing what we have in place right now for supplier management, price, commodity, pricing and executing the supply chain initiatives that we have. It does certainly help to have advanced nodes back in the area where it was previously. I mean that is our historically higher-margin business. But again, there's a lot of things in our control. from a cost perspective that we still need to get moving in the year to continue to show that improvement.
Your next question comes from the line of Brian Chin with Stifel.
A few questions. Maybe, Mike, where have you managed to keep lead times on the Dragonfly given the demand and your ability to stay in front of it? And more broadly, when talking to customers, what are your discussions around second half capacity needs for AI packaging? And shouldn't we really think about second half expansion being a function of expectations for growth in the AI market in 2025? Is that kind of the right way to think about that?
Yes, Brian. So from a lead time perspective, of course, in the packaging world for forever, we had very short visibility, and we would always build to a forecast of projection. So lead time is somewhat misleading, but I would say around 2 quarters sort of lead times right now given the high demand for the Dragonfly. The second half expansion is a question right now. I think there's more certainty in 2025, another round of expansion. Our customers are looking at their order books and influx and seeing if the capacity they have that they're bringing online now in the last 3 quarters, Q4, Q1, Q2 will be enough to get them through the second half or if they need to add additional capacity. But we've been given more stronger indication that 2025 would be a year that they need to add.
Okay. Got it. But I guess looking at your 1Q guide, sort of your commentary about the full year, it looks like you still have -- even though you have a harder compare probably than a lot of peers with maybe one of the few companies guiding for growth in first half versus second half last year. It looks like based on overall improvement in the business, you see some pickup in the second half, although maybe you're kind of tempering it at the moment.
I'm tempering it at the moment.
Okay. Fair enough. And then maybe, yes, Mark, question additional follow-up on the gross margins. The -- obviously, advanced nodes is very cyclically depressed, and you're not calling for that big of a pickup in that business at the moment this year, but you do expect to be in the model back in the target model. So it kind of suggests that when you just get any sort of start to pick up, not even close to sort of prior peak levels, but some pickup in the advanced nodes, you should be really comfortable within that target model, probably even exceeding it.
Yes, absolutely. I mean that when we get those numbers back up, certainly, the things we're doing now from a cost and operational standpoint are going to accelerate that.
Yes. And how many points of drag on gross margins is the depressed revenue level in advanced nodes right now?
Yes. I wouldn't comment specifically on that. I would just say, we've always stated that advanced nodes was well above company average. And the inspection business was at company average.
Your next question comes from the line of Charles Shi with Needham.
The first question, Mike, I think one quarter ago, you were expecting the AI chip packaging related revenue to be up by 50% in Q4. What was the actual number? Because given you did beat your guidance by roughly $10 million, probably it's a little bit over $50 million would be my guess, but I really want to hear what -- what was the actual number.
Yes. That's a good question, Brian -- sorry, Charles. But I don't have that number in front of me. However, nearly all of the upside we saw in the quarter if not all of it was tied to the AI packaging. So that basically that $10 million increase is primarily from that.
Got it. The second question, I think it's interesting you mentioned the aspect. I believe being adopted, if I heard you correctly, for AI packaging applications. When I look at the aspect, it seems like a top-tier OCD systems in your portfolio, and it's interesting that's been adopted for packaging. Can you kind of provide a little bit of color where exactly is that used for?
Well, I had some unique capability. Remember, it was designed to -- to measure the channel holes for 3D NAND. So big, big high deep aspect ratio metrology applications for 3D NAND. And you could imagine that there's some applications similar to that in Advanced Packaging, that the product is being applied to TSVs, for instance, and some other things that I'm not sure how much is public from our customers.
Is it more the HBM application or more on the logic packaging side?
Yes. No, I think it's more on the HBM applications right now. Yes.
Got it. Got it. So last year, really thanks for the color you provided about the trend in this AI side of the business. I want to ask you what's the status for the HBM in terms of orders? I think when you started seeing all these orders, you started to see from one customer primarily, right, the HBM customer? And then last quarter, you talked about a second HBM customer becomes aggressive. The third 1 is felt like it was still a little bit muted. Was that the same like a 1 quarter later now is the status? And when do you think the third guy going to pick up orders?
We think the third guy is picking up. So not saying who's who. But in the shell game of 1, 2, 3, we think the third is also picking up now and investing, and they have some unique technology that they think is going to help give them some market share advantages.
Next question comes from the line of David Duley with Steelhead Securities.
Yes, I'm on mute. I'm sorry. My first question is on gross margins. Just so I understand, it sounds like gross margins will improve without volume or mix because of cost reductions and what you've been focusing in on. Is that accurate?
Yes. Yes.
Right. As far as -- as far as the AI infection revenue, could you help us understand whatever the growth rate you had last year? How much do you think this is driven by units and/or how much do you think it's driven by much greater levels of intensity? And then as a follow-up to that, as far as Onto goes, is your -- does your business have a -- which is a greater piece of this inspection business? Is it high bandwidth memory or the GPU inspection?
Thanks, Dave. So I mean, a year ago, I wasn't really on the radar. So I would say -- and you know the volumes or the pure number of wafers tied to AI is not that high. So this is really about capital intensity. This is really about the complexity of these advanced architectures and how much precise metrology and inspection is required to yield these devices. So I think that's always been something we've talked about for years that in these really advanced applications, our Dragonfly tends to shine. The Swiss Army knife containing both inspection, metrology, unique capabilities and clear find that our customers have driven us to ever greater levels of performance. As far as the mix goes, I think the capital intensity is higher for logic, but there are 3 HBM players. So at least right now, what we've said is our backlog was roughly half and half. and logic.
Next question comes from the line of Mark Miller with Benchmark Company.
You mentioned gate all around, you're getting some traction there. I'm just wondering when does that fully ramp? Is it later this year or 2025? And also about the new fab, the funding by U.S. and Europe and Japan for new fabs, internal chip production. When does that start to really become full bloom?
Yes. So as far as when gate all around really ramps, that's the million-dollar question we all like to know. I don't have any great clarity there. Right now, we bet on in early 2025, there are some signs, I read recently N2 is certainly they're seeing stronger demand. So maybe that pulls in. But we're not seeing anything yet definitive one way or another where that ends up ramping. We just know our job right now is to make sure we have as strong a position in gate all around as possible. So when it does ramp, we can benefit than we possibly can. As far as the fabs around the world that are being incented, whether it's Europe, Japan, U.S., we've already taken some orders for at least. I don't know on memory about the European, but for sure, in Japan and in the U.S., we've already taken orders. But these are very small, and those fabs aren't obviously, as you know, ramping just yet.
[Operator Instructions] Your next question comes from the line of Vedvati Shrotre with Jefferies.
So you provided some color on the power, the specialty markets, which are growing 40% this year. Could you talk about what you're seeing into 2024? Does this continue to be strong? Or are you starting to see weakness there?
No. We continue to see a very strong specialty device and packaging going into 2024. So well over...
I just meant the power piece of this that the power piece of it grow as well...
Power -- sorry. No, we think it could grow. We're more comfortable with kind of flat at this record level, and there's opportunities for it to grow. We're working with customers and certain timing of their expansions. One of the things that we benefit from being process control is our value proposition isn't just tied to expansions of these -- with these customers, it's tied to output and the quality of the output. So some of these fabs still have a lot of opportunity to improve yields and, therefore, improve output without huge capital expense. So a lot of customers we're talking to are still -- we're still focusing on that value proposition and seeing some traction there.
I see. And if I may double click on that. So as far as I understood, most of your China revenues really come from the power revenues. So is that -- could you talk about the non-China versus China spend and how that's looking? Is it different from each other or are they turning different from each other in the 2 markets?
No, I don't believe they are different. We have activity in Japan, Europe, U.S. as well as China so -- including in discussions into 2024. So I wouldn't say there's any difference from that perspective.
Your next question comes from the line of David Duley with Steelhead Securities.
Yes. A couple more questions for me. Mike, could you talk a little bit more about the lithography tool deliveries during the quarter. I think I missed some of the detail. I think you said there was 3 systems to 2 customers. I didn't catch which applications. I was wondering if you could also elaborate. Are these new customers? Or are they current customers that are bringing more tools online?
Good questions. You pretty much got it. There are 2 applications, mobile and high-performance compute. So those were the primary applications. And there are 2 existing customers, so buying repeat business. So it's repeat orders from existing customers.
And -- would you expect to see this customer base continue to expand? Or as far as the growth in that segment in '24, if it does grow, is it going to come from the current customers or adding new customers? Or how should we think about that?
Well, we already have a new customer that we've talked about for glass. So that's a new customer, and we mentioned we'll be shipping that tool sometime in the summer. The -- but the bulk of the 2024 will be repeat business. And then I think in 2025, we'll see more new customers as well as some repeat business as well.
Is that glass substrate customer for a logic application or...
I believe so.
Okay. Final question for me is -- and I'm sorry if you already mentioned it, you talked about how your packaging revenue has grown dramatically, I think, 3x last year. What do you -- what would you guess to be -- the growth rate would be for that segment of your business in 2024?
I don't know specifically because with that comment, I was speaking about Dragonfly, and Dragonfly systems in particular. It's continuing to grow that much. I know how much I don't have in front of me. The whole segment, specialty devices and Advanced Packaging will be were pretty high double digits.
This concludes today's question-and-answer session. I will turn the call back to Mike Sheaffer for any additional or closing remarks.
Thanks again to everyone who joined us on the call today. A replay of the call will be available on our website at approximately 7:30 Eastern Time this evening. I would like to thank you for your continued interest in Onto Innovation. Rachel, please conclude the call. Thank you.
This concludes today's call. Thank you for your participation, and you may now disconnect.