Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation Q4 2009 Earnings Call Transcript

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Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (SMI)

Q4 2009 Earnings Call Transcript

February 9, 2010 7:30 pm ET

Executives

Enling Feng – Director, IR

David Wang – Executive Director, President and CEO

Gary Tseng – CFO

Chris Chi – Chief Business Officer

Analysts

Randy Abrams – Credit Suisse

Bill Lu – Morgan Stanley

Dan Heyler – Banc of America/Merrill Lynch

Michael Chou – Deutsche Bank

Steven Pelayo – HSBC

Eric Chen – BNP

Rick Hsu – Nomura Securities

Pranab Sarmah – Daiwa

Presentation

Operator

Welcome to the Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation fourth quarter 2009 webcast conference call. Today's conference call is chaired by Dr. David Wang, Chief Executive Officer and President; Mr. Gary Tseng, Chief Financial Officer; Mr. Chris Chi, Chief Business Officer; and Mr. Enling Feng, Director, Investor Relations.

Today's webcast conference call will be simultaneously streamed through the Internet at SMIC’s website at www.smics.com. Please be advised that your dial-ins are in listen-only mode. However, at the conclusion of the management presentation, we will be having a question-and-answer session upon which you will receive further instructions as to how to participate. The earnings press release is available for download at www.smics.com.

Without further ado, I would like to introduce to you Mr. Enling Feng. Please proceed.

Enling Feng

Hello, everyone. This is Enling. And good morning and good evening and welcome to the SMIC’s fourth quarter 2009 earnings conference call. Joining me on the call today are Dr. David Wang, our new Chief Executive Officer and President; Mr. Gary Tseng, just on board Chief Financial Officer; and Mr. Chris Chi, Chief Business Officer.

As usual, our call will be approximately 60 minutes in length. The earnings press release and the presentation are available for you to download at www.smics.com. Please also be reminded of the Safe Harbor statement stated as follows. SMIC's statements of its current expectations are forward-looking statements subject to significant risks and uncertainties. The actual results may differ materially from those contained in the forward-looking statements. Information as to those factors that could cause actual results to vary can be found in SMIC's Form 20-F filed with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission on June 22, 2009.

For today's agenda, CEO Dr. David Wang will speak on SMIC’s key initiatives and comment on our business. Following that, our CFO, Mr. Gary Tseng will highlight our fourth quarter 2009 financial results and first quarter 2010 guidance. Then we will open up the call for Q&A. I will now turn the call over to David.

David Wang

Good morning and good evening. Thank you for joining us for our earnings webcast. I’m very pleased and honored to be here with you today for my first earnings webcast as SMIC’s CEO. As you may know, I have worked in the semiconductor industry for many years, from semiconductor equipment industry to foundry service. And now as the leader of the new management team at SMIC, I intend to use the knowledge that I have acquired over these considerable years for one specific goal, sustained profitability.

To achieve this goal, we need to make the company more solid in all aspects of operations. Therefore in the last three months, much of my effort has been dedicated to recruiting a tough management team. Today I’m very proud to announce that we already have Chief Operating Officer, Dr. Simon Yang; Chief Business Officer, Chris Chi; and Chief Financial Officer, Gary Tseng on board. The last chief, the Administrative Officer and the Chief Legal Counsel will be on board after Chinese New Year.

Collectively, we, executive team, will have more than 100 years experience in semiconductor industry and more than 50 years experience in foundry industry. So therefore with these top world-class executives, SMIC is beginning a new era. We are determined to improve competencies across all areas thereby increasing the bench strength of the company.

Our new management team, those already here and the others soon to join us, will meet this objective head on. SMIC will become more competitive to face the challenges of the foundry market. To be sustainably profitable is SMIC’s number one priority. It will be evident through our planning, execution and the focus on core business that this is our main target.

SMIC is moving towards a customer-centric business model. We will introduce a centralized matrix organization, which will enable more effective synergies and communication across the company in all locations. This will certainly reduce costs of redundancy and overhead, increase efficiency and improve communication towards the goal of profitability. We also set up a new market-oriented business team to strengthen strategic alliances with our global key customers, selectively pursue new customers to maximize profitability and enhance our already strong market position in Mainland China. And this will be carried by our CBO, Mr. Chris Chi.

On the technology front, we continue to forecast and partner with our customers on advanced logic development and value-added legacy derivatives. We will continue to strengthen our product offerings through internal development, joint development and technology transfer. This will be carried by Dr. Simon Yang as our Chief Technology Officer and also our Chief Operating Officer.

Operationally, since I joined the company, we have made this a priority to improve our cycle time in coordination our supply chains, for better customer service and cost efficiency. Additionally, fab capacity will be aligned for higher margin products, and future investments will be made cautiously to support our core business. In short, turnaround is our top priority.

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