Amkor Technology's Management Presents at Credit Suisse Group Technology Conference (Transcript)

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Amkor Technology Inc. (AMKR)

Credit Suisse Group Technology Conference

November 30, 2011 16:30 pm ET

Executives

Joanne Solomon – Chief Financial Officer, EVP

Michael Lamble – EVP of Product Management and Worldwide Sales

Analysts

Satya Kumar – Credit Suisse

Presentation

Joanne Solomon

Thank you everyone for joining us today. We certainly appreciate when people come to our neck of the woods. We're actually headquartered in Chandler, Arizona, which is just south of here, so you helped us keep our operating costs lower by attending today. So we appreciate that, you’re welcome.

Just before we start off, we’re not updating our guidance today, it’s as of the date given. Any forward-looking comments please also refer to the risks associated with forward-looking comments in our SEC filings. We will have a couple of minutes of general remarks and then we will open up to questions from Satya Kumar and also from the floor. And with me today is Mike Lamble, our EVP of Product Management and Worldwide Sales, and I’m the Chief Financial Officer. So, I (indiscernible) you can take the …

Satya Kumar – Credit Suisse

Okay, thanks, Joanne. I was going to ask you how Q4 is tracking. So I guess you already answered.

Joanne Solomon

I guess, [Jeffrey] answered it.

Satya Kumar – Credit Suisse

But just if I sort of look that, the different moving parts in your business, I guess, you guys have 50% exposure to comps and 25% to consumer and the rest was split equally between PCs and other stuff. Most of the semi-companies that have been presenting here, I guess seven really sounded extremely good or bad, I guess, for Q4, Q1. But the front-end equipment companies have sounded a lot better.

I was wondering if you could just remind us as to the trends that you were seeing in Q4 relative to the different segments, which is embedded in your guidance which was down I think 9% or so which is – perhaps you can talk about that?

Joanne Solomon

Yeah, absolutely. So, with respect to where we’re seeing the strength its not all bad and its not all good. We’re seeing strength in communications and when we talk about communications, we include smartphones and tablets. Those are areas that remained strong for us.

We also have a dominant market share position in gaming. And gaming was very strong for us in Q3 and its very seasonal and that season ended a little bit earlier than it did last year, so gaming season ended with Q3 and so that’s what in part drove a sub-seasonal guidance in Q4 with our guidance being down 5% to 12% for Q4.

Looking into 2012, we expect to see continued strength on communications against smartphones and tablets.

Satya Kumar – Credit Suisse

I guess like normally Q1 is seasonally slow, right? And Q4 is seasonally strong, so this time around Q4 it was well below seasonal, down 9%, which is not that far away from what the other sub-cons have been saying. But given that you’re seeing the seasonal weakness in gaming a bit earlier, does that sort of set up easier compares for you all those being equal for Q1?

Joanne Solomon

Yeah, I’d agree with that. Its with seasonal cyclical correction happening in Q4, it does set up for an easier comparison in Q1. Our expectation is we will continue to see the growth with the smartphones and tablets players and it will all take – we will have to see further along in the year, how the demand recovers in the other areas. But it does set up a – a better comp, an easier comp.

Satya Kumar – Credit Suisse

Right. And I guess relative to your exposure to PCs, which is about 15% or so given the issues that are surrounding the hard disk drive space, can you remind us as to what your exposure is within the PC segment to with different parts and how this Thailand issue should be affecting you?

Joanne Solomon

Yeah, you know with respect to our exposure to PCs, we are mostly on the peripheral side. So, it does include some exposure to hard disk drives, printers, and the other peripherals coming off of the PCs. With respect to Thailand, as – where its going to – there are some upsides that are coming out of Thailand as people are looking for alternative sources of supply and then there is some areas where the supply chain is interrupted because of pieces and parts not coming out of Thailand. So net-net, it maybe incrementally positive, but not that significant to us.

We didn’t see the same level of supply chain disruption as we did last March with the Japanese disaster. So, its – we’re not expecting a significant impact, positive or negative from Thailand at this point.

Satya Kumar – Credit Suisse

Like the downside you might see from your PC exposure gets offset by extra business you get because your competitors have capacity there?

Joanne Solomon

That’s probably the case is that its net-net and maybe incrementally positive, but not significantly so.

Satya Kumar – Credit Suisse

Okay. I think one news that came out today was Toshiba announcing that they’re going to consolidate their front-end manufacturing, I forgot what it was, they were trying to consolidate some of the manufacturing activities in Korea, in Japan. I know you were in talks to buy some of their back-end operations. How does the consolidation in Japan play into that, and can you talk a bit about that?

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