AXT, Inc. (NASDAQ:AXTI) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Morris Young: Yes. I would say, we don’t see any new consumer product applications for indium phosphide this year. If there’s any increasing demand after they count all their inventories and if they digest their inventory is probably if the demand goes from the top line phone sets to the lower sets and then that may drive some increasing demand. I cannot tell, because the customers aren’t giving us visibilities. As far as future development is concerned, Charles, you had me right here in a very sort of among the inventory corrections. So, things are fairly pessimistic. But if you were to ask me what indium phosphide are used for, what’s our marketing, our gathering information, what’s the possibility, I definitely think there is a lot of growth potentials, especially in sensors, in lasers where you need high safety as well as autonomous vehicle.

I mean, we had customer interest in us delivering sizable product to that market. But that inquiry was late sometime last year, but it never materialized. When will it come back? I don’t know. I think other potential product is healthcare product. Again, the customer was picking our product for a beta site pilot production. I think unfortunately that is not materializing and becoming a major production product demand now. When will it come back? I think the interest is there, but we just don’t have visibility, it will come to become a major production demand yet.

Charles Shi: Yes. Thank you, Morris. Definitely understand that this is a supply chain that, well, the customer to — I mean, your end customer probably only going to tell you almost the last minute whether it’s go, no go, totally understand. So, I think my last question really around the larger diameter gallium arsenide for microLED application. I think that one of your top customer recently said it’s that — they’re going to see meaningful revenue in 2025, which kind of implies that, that’s the time they start to ship in volume, right? But I don’t know how much of your revenue will lead to their revenue in terms of generating meaningful revenue from this microLED application. Can you kind of give us some idea how the ramp of revenue could look like? I think you said that you’re going to start shipping some volume this year, but — this year, next year and the 2025. How does the revenue ramp look like? Thank you.

Morris Young: Sure. We are shipping hundreds of wafer to customers. I think they are doing their pilot runs as well as looking at wafer in all different ways, including going epi and seeing how flat they need the wafer to be, and running through their pilot production lines. And I think we agree with you. I think although the earlier projection was that it’s going to start to have a production ramp up in 2024, but I think it’s — we think it’s going to be late 2024 rather than early 2024. So that matches with your 2025 big production ramp. But I think I’m very glad to see that this project is really taking shape and looks like it’s going to be a major project. But I think the bigger known is how successful this project will be and will it spread to other applications.

Because our customer has told us that this is just the start of the program, and eventually, this could lead to something like five to 10 times the volume as the initial demand is. And it does depend upon how well they can run this project and how well they can reduce the cost, and how overall microLED performed. But I think, as you know, there are many, many different competing technologies eyeing for this microLED applications, such as wearables, such as goggles. So, I think this is a big win for gallium arsenide. And I think we are very well positioned because we not only are in substrate making, but we are also in supplying some other raw materials, which will benefit us, because this — the demand for gallium arsenide is going to increase significantly.