Entegris, Inc. (NASDAQ:ENTG) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Operator: We’ll take our next question from Charles Shi with Needham.

Charles Shi: First off, Bertrand, I kind of want to ask because if I back out that $19 million contribution from EC and the distributor agreement you have with Element Solutions relative to the guidance you provided a quarter ago, it looks like Q4 is still slightly below what was implied in your guidance about a quarter ago. So I wonder what exactly is backed into the relatively lighter outlook for Q4? Is it still mostly the memory or there is some of the mature foundry logic related weakness [indiscernible] into the number.

Bertrand Loy: Yes. So good — so again, if you look at the midpoint of our guidance, that’s about $780 million. That’s about 2% down sequentially, and that’s really a reflection of a few factors. I mean, first, the market continues to be soft, as I implied in my previous answer. We also want to recognize that Q4 is seasonally a weaker quarter for us. And then the final factor is really the level of utilization that we expect to see in some of our mainstream customers, which is maybe a little bit steeper for reduction than what we were expecting a few months ago. But on balance, again, I think that this is a solid quarter where we expect to continue to outpace the industry. And again, if you take that quarter in the broader context of the year, as we mentioned, we expect to be down about essentially 7% on a comparable basis versus if you look at excluding QED Electronics, Chemicals and the Enthone business from both our 2022 and 2023 numbers.

Our top line on a comparable basis will be down 7% 2023 over 2022, which, again, is essentially 6 points of outperformance against the industry, which is in line with the commitment that we have made all along since the beginning of the year.

Charles Shi: So maybe just a very quick follow-up. What’s the assumption for MSI this year? Obviously, there’s some production costs on memory side and of course, you just mentioned the mature side. I wonder what’s the latest thinking in terms of MSI for?

Bertrand Loy: Yes. The way we think about it right now is we think about MSI down in the low to mid-teens for the year. We expect CapEx to be down approximately 20% and so the industry down in the low to mid-teens. So MSI down low teens, CapEx down approximately 20% and the industry blend down low to mid-teens.

Operator: We’ll take our next question from Mike Harrison with Seaport Research Partners.

Michael Harrison: Good morning. Bertrand, you gave a little bit of an update on the Taiwan facility and the ramp-up process, which sounds like it’s still going to take a few more quarters. Just curious if you can kind of walk through quantitatively, how we should think about that margin drag and the impact that it had in Q3 and then how that is going to compare in Q4? Is it going to be a pretty similar drag until we get those commercial volumes starting up in the second half of next year? Or how should we think about that? .

Bertrand Loy: Yes. So the drag on margin will be very, very similar in Q3, Q4 and as we enter the beginning of next year. The reason for that is really the pace at which we expect to complete our qualification. So remember that there are 3 major types of products that we intend to manufacture in Taiwan. The first one would be our deposition material products or qualification for those products have gone extremely well. We are essentially complete and we’re starting to accept purchase orders from customers for deposition materials. Next would be our fluid handling products, specifically our high-purity drums. We have completed our internal qualifications, but the customer qualifications for those products can take up to 6 to 9 months.