Photronics, Inc. (NASDAQ:PLAB) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

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Frank Lee: Richelle, are we still have that same difficulty at up.

Operator: You’re loud and clear, sir.

Frank Lee: Thank you. We have are there other questions?

Operator: Did you not hear Han’s question?

Frank Lee: I did not.

Operator: Hans, could you repeat your question, sir?

Gus Richard: Yes. Can you hear me?

Frank Lee: Yes. Thank you, Hans.

Gus Richard: This is Gus. Real quick. To pan photomask that spun out about six months ago. It’s been in that state for a while now. And I’m just wondering how is that impacting the photomask market? Or is it — or as things remaining the same?

Frank Lee: Gus, Thank you. Basically, we don’t see a major change in the business model, since their spin-off they have made major capital investment even announced some projects in Texas, but nothing materialized. So at this moment, from customer side, from our side, we haven’t seen a real difference.

Gus Richard: Got it. And then in terms of the $130 million in CapEx, can you provide a little bit of color? Is that for de-bottlenecking? Or are you going to get some high throughput tools for mainstream? Is it going to be for high end? What — can you give a little color on where you’re investing?

Frank Lee: Sure. Actually, in the past 15 months, the equipment data in photomask is also very long, same as in semiconductor business. So some tool will actually ordered one year and half ago. So the tools are coming in is, main progress of this tool is to serve the mainstream business expansion and also we don’t have some tools which are going to the end of life. So we are doing certain tool replacement in addition to mainstream business expansion. However, the tool to be repressed our old tool, so the new tool has a better performance, higher throughput. So, we expect not only just a replacement, we will see some new capacity added to our overall production capacity.

Gus Richard: Got it. And then the last one for me. You talked a little bit about demand softening a bit. Can you put that in context of lead times, lead times have stretched quite a bit from days to, I think, weeks or months. How has lead time changed over the course of the quarter?

Frank Lee: The soften demand actually stated two, three months ago, particularly in the high-end side. But it doesn’t really impact our fab utilization. We still have enough work. But of course, this time to customer has been reduced because the VAT level is lower. However, there are certain signs — the demand for the high-end is coming back. At this moment, we — it’s a little bit too early to be very precise in terms of green recovery. But from our input from sales and customer, we do see the high-end level start to come back.

Operator: Thank you. And I’m showing no further questions at this time. And I’d like to hand the conference back over to Frank Lee for any further remarks.

Frank Lee: Thank you, Richelle. Thank you for joining the meeting. I’m very pleased with our performance in 2022 and proud of the way our team has responded to the and changing environment. We are well positioned to continue our success in the future and looking forward to updating you as we continue to make progress. Thank you for your interest, and have a good day. Thank you everybody. Thank you.

Operator: This concludes today’s conference. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect. Everyone, have a great day.

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