Axt Inc Q1 FY2021 Earnings Call

Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to AXT's First Quarter 2021 Financial conference call. Leading the call today is Dr. Morris Young, Chief Executive Officer, and Gary Fischer, Chief Financial Officer. My name is Laurie, and I will be your coordinator today. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speakers' presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session. And please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. And I would now like to turn the call over to Leslie Green, Investor Relations for AXT.

Thank you, Laurie, and good afternoon, everyone. Before we begin, I would like to remind you that during the course of this conference call, including comments made in response to your questions, we will provide projections or make other forward-looking statements regarding, among other things, the future financial performance of the Company, market conditions and trends, including expected growth in the markets we serve, emerging applications using chips or devices fabricated on our substrates, our product mix, our ability to increase orders in succeeding quarters to control costs and expenses to improve manufacturing yields and efficiencies to utilize our manufacturing capacity, the schedule and timeliness regarding our relocation, the growing environmental, health, and safety and chemical industry regulations in China as well as global economic and political conditions, including trade tariffs and restrictions. We wish to caution you that such statements deal with future events that are based on management's current expectations and are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual events or results to differ materially. These uncertainties and risks include, but are not limited to, overall conditions in the markets in which the Company competes, global financial conditions and uncertainties, COVID-19 and other outbreaks of a contagious disease, potential tariffs and trade restrictions, increased environmental restrictions in China, market acceptance and demand for the Company's products, the financial performance of our partially owned supply chain companies, and the impact of delays by our customers on the timing of sales of their products. In addition to the factors that may be discussed in this call, we refer you to the Company's periodic reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. These are available online by link from our website and contain additional information on risk factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from our current expectations. This conference call will be available on our website at AXT.com through April 28, 2022. Also, before we begin, I want to note that shortly following the close of market today, we issued a press release reporting financial results for the first quarter of 2021. This information is available on the Investor Relations portion of our website at AXT.com. I would now like to turn the call over to Gary Fischer for a review of our first quarter results.

Thank you, Leslie, and good afternoon, everyone. We are pleased to report that total revenue for the first quarter of 2021 was $31.4 million, up 16% from $27 million in the fourth quarter of 2020 and up 51% from the $20.7 million in the first quarter of 2020. As many of you know, we expected that the convergence of expanding markets, such as 5G, moving past the relocation program, and overall growth in indium phosphide would push us past the $30 million mark, but we could not predict the exact quarter for this event. It is an exciting milestone and Morris is already pushing the team towards new goals. Of our total revenue, substrate sales were $23.4 million compared with $21.5 million in the fourth quarter of 2020 and $16.9 million in Q1 of 2020. The revenue from our two consolidated raw material joint venture companies was $8 million in Q1, up from $5.5 million in Q4 of 2020 and from $3.8 million in Q1 of 2020. In the first quarter of 2021, revenue from Asia Pacific was 73%, Europe was 17% and North America was 10%. Also in the first quarter, no customers reached 10% of revenue, and the top five customers generated approximately 26% of total revenue. As you know, we normally read these statistics quickly and move on. But today, I want to highlight them because they're important. Usually, we do have at least one 10% customer. And usually, the top five customers contribute approximately 35% to 40% of total revenue. This quarter, when we achieved over $31 million in revenue, it was not because of one big order from one big customer. Further, on this point, the top five customers made up a smaller percentage of our total revenue than normal. Together, these factors vividly portray an increasingly broad-based, diversified set of customers and applications. From a business perspective, it is significant in demonstrating the growing adoption of the materials we manufacture as well as the repeatability of this quarter's success. Moving on. Gross margin in the first quarter was 36.8%, up from 33.9% in Q4 of 2020 and up from 26.6% in Q1 of 2020. The increase was primarily driven by product mix and increasing revenue volume, and there is some tailwind for us from one of the consolidated raw material companies. Total operating expenses in Q1 were $8 million, up from $7.2 million in the prior quarter and $6.2 million in Q1 of 2020. In comparing Q1 of 2020 to the recent Q1, the majority of the increase, 55% in fact, is in R&D. Included in this are the development costs for gallium arsenide wafers. Today, after the market closed, we released an announcement describing our success in developing and shipping 8-inch gallium arsenide wafers. Morris will give you some color on this in a moment, but it is a big step, and we believe our investment in this program could lead to sizable new opportunities. We are currently in development of 6-inch indium phosphide wafers. This is another R&D project that is expected to position us to participate in some exciting new applications for indium phosphide. To put Q1 operating expense in perspective, total operating expenses as a percent of revenue was 25.4% for the quarter. This is a bit lower than the 2020 quarterly average of 27.6%. We currently have a lot of exciting growth initiatives underway, which leads us to believe that we will be in this range over the next several quarters. Nevertheless, we will be drilling down more deeply to ensure controls and oversight are appropriate. Total stock compensation expense for the first quarter was $816,000. This is also part of the operating expense increase as it is up $125,000 over Q4 and a bit more than that than Q1 of 2020. Operating profit for the first quarter of 2021 is $3.6 million compared with an operating profit of $1.9 million in Q4 and an operating loss of $634,000 in Q1 of 2020. Other income and below-the-line items, including tax provision for the first quarter of 2021, was a net gain of $204,000. Especially noteworthy in Q1 is a net profit of $1.1 million from the partially-owned companies in AXT's supply chain accounted for under the equity method. The market for raw materials has tightened up, and raw material pricing has increased. These gains were offset by a foreign exchange loss of $173,000 and a tax provision of $746,000. Our Q1 results included approximately $275,000 in tariffs as a result of the 25% tariff charge on importing wafers into the United States from China. For Q1 2021, we had a net profit of $3.4 million or a profit of $0.08 per diluted share. By comparison, we had a net profit of $2.1 million or a profit of $0.05 per diluted share in the fourth quarter of 2020 and a net loss of $178,000 or a loss of $0.01 per share in Q1 of 2020. The share count for this recent Q1 was 42.726 million shares. Cash, cash equivalents, and investments were $66.9 million as of March 31. By comparison, at December 31, it was $78.6 million. The decrease is primarily attributable to an increase in working capital accounts for accounts receivable, inventory, and prepaid of $9.8 million, which was modestly offset by an increase in accounts payable of $730,000 plus capital expenditure payments. To put this in context, revenue was up $4.3 million from the previous quarter, and accounts receivable is up $3.9 million. These two numbers are correlated, and this is especially true for Q1 because the early months of Q1 had the Chinese New Year, a week-long break, and as a result, our shipments were back-end loaded for the quarter. Collections from these shipments will move into Q2, benefiting cash this quarter. We also used cash for inventory, which is up because of two reasons: first, the order rate is strong, which means we are needing more inventory. Secondly, raw material prices are moving up, and we are buying a little bit ahead of the market to keep our cost of goods sold lower. Finally, we used cash for prepayments, which are up as a result of the annual payments that will be amortized over 12 months. An example of this is insurance premiums. This gives you a bit of color on cash utilization. Depreciation and amortization in the quarter were $1.6 million, and capital investments were $5.6 million. Net inventory at March 31 increased by $3.2 million in the quarter and ended at $54.7 million. Ending inventory consisted of approximately 46% in raw materials, 48% in work in progress, and 6% in finished goods. This concludes the discussion of our quarterly financials. Before Morris speaks, let me give you a brief update and comments about our plan to list our company in China on the STAR Market in Shanghai. As early as the fall of 2019, we were looking into this possibility and spent considerable time and effort in assessing the opportunity during all of 2020. We finally publicly announced it to all of you in November 2020, while Morris and I were still together in China. One of the things that became clear as we drilled down is that the process is more complicated than an IPO in the U.S. and that it takes longer to accomplish. An interesting example is that a prospective IPO company in China is required to have mandatory training on what it actually means to be a public company. What are the requirements and expectations placed upon a public company? Morris took AXT public in 1998, and even he is going to be required to take the training in China. So we completed the private equity activity in January, and the rest of Q1 efforts included aligning our hidden assets in China beneath our main company in Beijing in Tongmei. Tongmei is also undergoing an audit conducted by Ernst & Young, China, and here again, it is more detailed and more complicated. Fortunately, we have a great team, and they're both patient and persistent. These sorts of steps will continue in Q2. We're hoping to submit our SEC application around June 30 or in Q3. Overall, the process is going fine. We continue to think that our overall timing is good in terms of market opportunities on the horizon and accessing favorable capital markets in China. In conclusion, it has been a busy but good quarter, and this concludes our financial comments. I'll now turn the call over to Dr. Morris Young for the review of our business.

Thank you, Gary, and good afternoon, everybody. Q1 was a very important milestone quarter for AXT. We met and exceeded the $30 million revenue threshold, which has been a goal of ours and a challenge that I gave to our team. Our performance surpassed our expectations with growth in nearly all of our strategic products. We also drove improvements in our gross margin and achieved strong growth in profitability. What we are seeing today is the convergence of a number of trends across our portfolio that are beginning to have a meaningful impact on the demand for our products. These include applications in 5G telecommunications and its related technologies, datacenter connectivity, LED-based sensing and display, healthcare monitoring also referred to as biometrics, consumer devices, and others. Our investments over the past several years in our new and expanded facility elevated our businesses and manufacturing processes. In-house expertise and product development efforts are all now allowing us to support the requirements of new and exciting growth opportunities. In indium phosphide, we have the second largest revenue quarter in our history. This number was surpassed only by a large sale in Q2 of 2019, in which we received a very large order from a single customer who was buying for future demand. By contrast, this past quarter of 2021, our sales were driven by a number of customers across a diversified set of applications, indicating that demand is broad-based and building momentum. In some ways, indium phosphide wafers sketches a classic Silicon Valley story. Ten years ago, indium phosphide revenue was barely $1 million and was the lowest revenue generator out of all our product lines, lower even than germanium on raw material. It was classically a product waiting for the market to arrive. Today, we have demand from a number of different applications, and we are seeing additional applications on the horizon. In particular, we saw continued strength from 5G and its related technologies. At the subsidiary level, it can be difficult to distinguish between optical connections, specifically for 5G equipment or those for related technologies like passive optical networks that support 4G and 5G functionality. But from our perspective, any modernization of telecom infrastructure that utilizes indium phosphide is positive for our business. Demand continued to be strong in the second quarter, and we can scale quickly and cost-effectively to meet our customers' requirements. In datacenter connectivity, demand remains steady and at a positive level. During Q1, we were pleased to become fully qualified at our Tier 1 customer. This was a multi-quarter process that touched nearly every aspect of our business and elevated our operations for the benefit of all our customers. We were pleased to work closely with our customer on this qualification process, and we are proud to have been awarded this designation. As I mentioned in 2021, we expect to see a meaningful emergence of additional or new applications for indium phosphide material in such areas as healthcare monitoring and consumer devices. Many are being driven by Tier 1 players. We're currently engaged in these applications, which represent a new growth area for our business this year. Now turning to gallium arsenide. Revenue in Q1 grew both in wireless and LED applications. It was our highest revenue quarter in gallium arsenide since Q1 of 2018. Demand in Q1 was driven by high-end applications, including automotive, lighting, display, and IoT. As we look into Q2, we expect LED demand to remain strong, but we do expect revenue from wireless applications to decline from Q1 levels. We were very pleased to announce today our successful development of 8-inch gallium arsenide wafers for LED applications. We have delivered several quantities to our interested customers, and we are working with them to meet the requirements of their emerging projects. Increasing the diameter in crystal growth is complicated for our focused materials. Every step up in diameter sizes comes with a major increase in technical challenges of producing it. But AXT has always been a pioneer in this area with an entrepreneurial spirit to drive innovation in order to unlock the potential for our new applications. We have been able to overcome a number of hurdles. This is no longer a test tube laboratory program because we are now shipping wafers according to our customer specifications. This is a tremendous step for AXT, and we are very proud of our team. Among the many benefits, we believe this innovation will help to enable the scale and efficiency required for a number of very high-volume applications, including VCSELs for 3D sensors, LiDAR as well as microLEDs for displays. We believe that microLEDs are likely to become the next major volume driver of gallium arsenide chips. We're seeing reports that the potential microLED market for smaller consumer devices like wearables and homes may be larger than the entire current market for gallium arsenide substrates. Regardless of specific numbers, this is an exciting space that could add significant new value to the LED markets in 2024 and beyond. These devices are expected to consume less power, provide sharper contrast, and produce brilliant lighting and colors. Their application could extend from wearable devices and handheld devices to very large screens like high-end televisions of the future. Tier 1 players are already driving the development of the technology, and we believe that our wafers are used for early-stage activities. Turning to germanium substrates. Coming off a very strong quarter in Q4 last year, revenue for germanium substrates decreased modestly in Q1. However, the satellite solar cell market looks to be strong in 2021, and we expect to see growth this year. Finally, I want to touch upon our raw material business, which grew 45% in Q1. As you may recall, we currently consolidate two joint ventures: BoYu, which manufactures high-temperature pBN crucibles and pBN-based tools for OLED and other applications, and JinMei, which is a diversified industrial high-purity materials supplier. In 2020, both companies relocated to our campus in Kazuo, enabling them to expand capacity in response to strong market demand. This, coupled with a recovery in the pricing of raw materials, such as raw gallium, has allowed both companies to grow meaningfully in recent quarters. As we look ahead to Q2, we expect performance to remain at around this strong level, although perhaps coming down modestly from Q1. The improvement of commodity pricing also enabled joint ventures that account for using the early equity method to perform very well in Q1. In fact, we saw a 214% increase in their contribution during this quarter. We believe the demand environment should remain healthy this year and that their performance will continue to be strong to our results. In closing, we're off to a strong start in 2021 with broad-based customers and applications showing healthy demand. We're excited to see many of our opportunities for which we have been preparing over the last two years are now yielding results, and with more to come. In addition, our successful development of 8-inch gallium arsenide outlines our product and technology capabilities with Tier 1 customer requirements. We believe this will open up significant new applications for us over the next several years and enhance our reputation as the go-to supplier. With our new factories ramping up well and ample room for capacity expansion, we're ready and excited for the year ahead. This concludes my prepared comments. I will now turn the call back to Gary for our second quarter guidance.

Thank you, Morris. As Morris discussed, the demand environment remains healthy in Q2. Indium phosphide coming off a very strong quarter, we believe we will see continued growth. We also expect growth in gallium arsenide revenues for LED and a modest increase in germanium. As Morris mentioned, we expect a pullback in gallium arsenide for wireless and a flat to slightly down for raw materials. As such, we expect to see revenue in Q2 of between $30.5 million to $31.5 million. We believe that our net profit will be in the range of $0.06 to $0.08 a share, and that's based on a share count of approximately 42.8 million shares. This concludes our prepared comments. Morris and I will be glad to answer any questions. Operator, Laurie?

And we have a question from Dave Kang of B. Riley. Your line is open.

This is Dave Kang on for Dave. I was wondering if you guys could comment on the effect of chip charges. Broadly, we're seeing chip prices increase. And we were wondering, are you guys also increasing prices as this phenomenon occurs? And the second question is, how long can you expect this raw materials pricing environment to stick around?

So let me take a crack at that first. In general, the substrate business is difficult to increase price at a substrate level. However, on the raw materials side, yes, they do fluctuate with demand and supply. And the raw material, for instance, gallium price has increased from about $150 a kilogram last year and as late as last quarter was $400 a kilogram. So it's more than double. But recently, the price has come down a bit, but not significantly, down to about $350 or $400 a kilogram for gallium. But I do believe that the demand is still very tight. And so however, there are more new suppliers coming into production because the price has gone up. In terms of the substrate level, I believe it's more difficult to increase prices. However, the way I would describe it is that in terms of indium phosphide, many times we may increase the price if the customer wants to tighten their specifications. For instance, if you want material, let's say, with defect density in the neighborhood of $500, and that sort of sets a price of X. And if all of a sudden the requirement is such that you want defect density, it would be half of that $200 versus $500, then the price may rise by a factor of 20% to 25%. So that's another way of increasing price. In other words, drive your productivity up and increase the price. Did I answer your question?

Yes. That's helpful. And I guess just a quick follow-up, are you broadly seeing customers trying to tighten specifications more like maybe the supply chain constraints are forcing them to be more cautious with their solicitations or anything? Or…

Yes, that's an interesting question. Actually, I think in phosphide specifically, gallium arsenide is a lot more mature. So I think we see less of a change. But in indium phosphide, we do see customers coming in with tighter specifications because they are mainly dealing with high-end products, such as lasers and very demanding performance levels. So they want to tighten up the specifications as they develop their next-generation product. Also, what we were also seeing was that we start to see—we delivered this better quality product to one customer. And all of a sudden, other customers are seeing the same thing. So the end customer starts to tighten their specifications to the intermediaries. So yes, we do see that tightening of the specifications coming in indium phosphide.

Your next question is from Richard Shannon of Craig-Hallum. Your line is open.

Let me start with a kind of a multipart question on gross margins. I had some very nice numbers here in the first quarter. I think you called out mix and volume as the drivers here. I didn't hear you talk anything about yields? I think you've alluded in the last call or two that the potential of seeing those improve as you kind of get more comfortable with the new facility. But—and so I'd love to hear what you think about, not only for the second quarter along those lines, but also, when you talk about buying some more inventory here at lower costs, but eventually that's going to start to bake in here. When do you see these—the raw materials prices start to bake in and kind of level off, kind of provide a little bit of a headwind in gross margins?

Well, I would—this is Gary. I'd say we've already taken advantage of some of that because we saw this happening early in the quarter, even as recently as last Q4. So I don't see that all of a sudden we're going to have a huge benefit because the raw material price that we paid is going to be moving from inventory into cost of goods sold. It is a factor that we've taken advantage of, but it's difficult for you to be able to measure the impact.

Well—so let me put in my two cents; I'm not the CFO, Gary, but the way I see it is that the raw material price increase is difficult for us to pass along to our customers, especially in the short term. However, the benefit for AXT is that our raw material supplier or joint venture who supplies gallium starts to make a lot of profits. So that's the benefit to us. But we don't write up our inventory because we have a lower cost gallium in our inventory, right?

Right.

We don't write it up. The only time that it will impact this is actually if our newly purchased gallium, for which we pay the higher price, starts to get into our inventory, then we sort of, in average, get our cost of goods sold up. And if that price remains to be high, then our cost of manufacturing that substrate becomes higher. And if we cannot pass along that increase to our customers, then our gross margin will decrease. However, we are probably still better off than our competitors because we have joint ventures to offset part of it. In a way, we have some insurance policy.

And I guess part of my question is when would that happen? I assume that's a relic of your cycle time of manufacturing. But I also want to bake in here the potential of seeing yield improvement on your substrate manufacturing as well and kind of get a multi-quarter view on what you think your gross margins can do. We've talked about in the last few quarters about the potential or kind of long-term goal of getting to 40%. It sounds like you got a lot— a few tailwinds, maybe one or two headwinds here, and wanted to kind of look at that in a multi-quarter trend. Can you kind of help us out in that context?

Yes. I'd say, to be specific about yields, I think there's still some improvement that we can gain. And I think we will see the yields improve as things settle in and stabilize at the new sites. Reciprocally, I think we probably see some push on cost of goods sold because of raw materials. So they may have some offsetting effect. We still think the prudent comment that we should make for today is that somewhere around 35% is very achievable, obviously. But Morris and I are not inclined to have everybody move the margins up after one quarter, you know, a one-quarter improvement. We'd like to see a couple more quarters before we think, okay, this is the pattern going to be. So certainly, we're pleased with the margin from Q1. We think we'll probably be at or above 35% for Q2. But we're hesitant to paint out the rest of the year and pick a new number.

So—yes. Richard, maybe you and I are old-timers. I think you're probably thinking that with raw material prices going up, it should help us on gross margin. And that was exactly what happened back in 2011 and 2012 when gallium prices went from about $1000 a kilogram. However, the difference is that in 2011, we consolidated that joint venture into our revenue as well as our profits. So when the profit of that joint venture started to help us, our gross margin jumped up as well. However, that joint venture, although we still own substantially, I think last I saw was 39%—

Correct, yes.

But we don't consolidate their revenue anymore. So although we enjoy the profit they make, we don't count it in terms of gross margins. Does that sort of answer your question?

Yes. That's helpful. And I'll note the fact that you called me old, Morris, so thanks for that.

I am only speaking for myself.

My quick follow-on question is, Morris, you talked about indium phosphide, some new applications here, and you said there's going to be some contributions this year. Any way you can help us scale this contribution? Is it going to be noticeable, very small? How would you characterize that and help us think about that going forward in the next year?

I think it's going to be meaningful. Yes. I think not only this product, but I think overall I am excited about this new approach, utilizing the UV spectrum of lighting as well as lasers, which can do a lot of wonderful things for healthcare monitoring and etc. So instead of just good telecommunications, which is great, I mean, it just cannot escape from utilizing indium phosphide for fiber optics. However, when you're dealing with consumer products, imagination is limitless. Everybody likes to take care of their health, and this is a great approach to help you monitor your health. I mean, I think it has a great future. I mean we are only starting at the beginning of this. And I think there are other developments which can follow-on this. So I think not only is it going to be meaningful, but also, I think it's going to be multiyear. And we just don't know how big it is going to be, whether it's going to be 500% or 1000%.

And your next question is from Gus Richard of Northland. Your line is open.

Just going back to the new applications for indium phosphide, do you have a sense of whether it's a health monitor or some sort of other type of consumer product? Do you have any sense of the application at this point?

Gus, we really don't know. And if anything, we can only guess, but even if I know, I don't think I'm allowed to talk about it anyway. But because this is very new, I would say, you wait out a quarter or two, eventually it's going to go on the market. And if somebody is going to take it apart, then they're going to see what it is for. But I don't think we're kidding around. This is real. We're working on this for almost more than two years. And we are seeing it ramping.

And you expect this application to be—you said it's going to be significant. Is it going to be a material part of the indium phosphide revenue? In other words, for the year, could it add up to 10% of your indium phosphide revenue?

Well, that's a hard question because I don't know how fast the rest of them will grow. But is it significant—yes, it could add a good 5% to 10%. Yes.

Okay. And then, Gary, for you, just looking at the opex, it was quite a bit above what I was expecting in the quarter. And clearly, you've got a need to invest in R&D and SG&A was up. Can you give a little bit more color on what were driving those, particularly the SG&A in the quarter, and how should we think about that going forward?

Yes. I mean, the biggest driver from 20,000 feet up is we just have a lot of initiatives. There's a tremendous amount of activity, energy, and implementation of the vision from Morris and the marketing team. So that drives down in lots of ways and touches and lots of general ledger accounts that expenses book to them. We are pleased that over half of its R&D, that's good. But to drill down another layer, there has been growth in headcount; both at our Tongmei company and also JinMei and BoYu. So stock compensation has increased. Wages have increased. The bonuses we paid more recently were larger-than-normal because we finished 2020 on a good note. So I'd say the biggest single component setting aside R&D versus SG&A is labor. Also, compensation for our reps; we pay commission on sales. When sales are up, commissions are up. A fair amount goes towards what I would call permit still and licenses and things that are required to facilities and continuing to layer in all the kinds of things that are required. Those are things that come to mind extemporaneously. So it's all—I mean, for me as a numbers watcher, there's a story behind every number. And the story for these numbers is about excitement, initiatives, and good things happening. But the flip side a bit, myself and our sort of senior level controllers and stuff, we're watching it closely. I'd also—I'd take some comfort for me as a business person that as a percent of revenue, it's actually lower in Q1 of this year than the average from all of 2020. So those are the kinds of things I can put around it. And I hope that's helpful in giving you some color. Maybe, Morris, do you want to add anything?

Yes. I think many times, I remember when our revenue was lower, people were asking us, well, if your revenue were to grow another good 30% or 50%, would most of this drop down to your profit? And we'll say, absolutely. We're not going to get a higher raise, salary, and we're never to hire other—some senior vice president, etc. However, now our revenue grew by 50% year-over-year. And now, well, you caught us being a liar about it. But then if we dissect it, I think I'm happy to see that we're spending a lot on activities in terms of the new hire that will help us to go STAR Market listing, the 6-inch indium phosphide development, the aged gallium arsenide, I mean, all those are exciting initiatives, which will translate to even higher revenue or higher profits. So what I'm saying is that if our revenue were to grow 50% and stay there, we don't have tremendous growth opportunity and start listing in China, then yes, sure, everything will come back because I don't expect to earn much more than what we do, and we don't need to add any more salespeople or another person to do more revenue. However, when you prepare yourself for more growth, more opportunities, you need to spend a little bit more money. I think that's the way I see it.

I still think there's a tremendous leverage on our business model. So we're proud of what we're accomplishing. We don't see it increasing a lot right now, so…

We have a follow-up question from Richard Shannon of Craig-Hallum. Your line is open.

I just wanted to ask about the STAR Market listing process here. And you mentioned the process that's more difficult than what normally happens here in the U.S. One reading the news might suggest that those have gotten more difficult even within—even for companies who have started the process earlier. And so I wonder if you can comment on the degree to what you're seeing those getting more difficult just within China? It seems like there's some reticence about the quality of companies on the STAR exchange that are in China and worry about whatever those due diligence requirements get even worse for U.S. companies like yourself?

So let me try that first. But definitely, Gary is more qualified. He's very much involved. I mean, every day, there are many, many activities Gary is covering. But let me give you the high-level comment first. I believe the timing process of the STAR Market listing, I heard it was because there are too many companies going public on STAR Market in China. That's why they want to tighten it up, otherwise, they're going to have hundreds and hundreds of companies that all want to go public. As a result, I think that they are lengthening the process. For instance, let me give you an example. They're looking at senior management; they want to make sure there's no really part of transaction. You want to make sure—or revenue is real. There's no funky business. And they are tightening up. But I think to a certain degree, our investment bankers in China are telling us that part may be better for us because we have been a public company in the United States for the last, what, 20—20-some odd years.

Twenty-three years. Yes.

So we scrub every one of our quarters. So we are really doing the right business. And we're also a real company delivering high-quality products. So I think all that speaks well for us. However, because the China regulatory agency is more cautious, they are tightening the screws, so they're slowing down the process. So I think as a result, we may see that there is a slight delay, or every step of the way, they want to make sure it's doing the right thing, which we have been doing all along anyway. So I think it's a double-edged sword. I mean, Gary?

Yes. I think Morris hit the nail right on the head. So we're not surprised at what's causing things to be a little—raise the bar, if you will, to leap over, lengthen the time a bit more because they are trying to be very, very sure about who gets through that gate. But if you take a step back and look at our Tongmei company, it was founded in 1998 by Morris and other leaders of the Company at that time. What that makes it over 23 years old. Collectively now with adding BoYu and JinMei, it's over 1000 employees. They're all Chinese citizens. They all pay taxes in China. You drill down further into the supply chain. I doubt there's many other companies applying for STAR Market listing that have partial ownership of ten other companies in China. So we don't want to be cocky at all. But from a business standpoint, this is a very, very attractive company to take public. And we manufacture something; you can see it, we build things. It's not software. We've been audited since 1998 in— or maybe in 1999 in China. So it's harder, it's more work, but the rewards are significant. And as we see things growing on the horizon, this is a wonderful opportunity to have a significant amount of capital set aside to take advantage of growth opportunities around the world. So yes, it's harder, but we're all in. And our team is excited. And nobody is discouraged; they're just tired.

And there are no questions on line at this time. I will turn the call back over to Dr. Morris Young for his closing remarks.

Thank you. Thank you, everybody, for participating in our conference call. In June, we will be participating in Craig-Hallum's Institutional Investor Conference. As always, please feel free to contact me, Gary Fischer, or Leslie Green directly if you would like to set up a call. We look forward to speaking with you in the near future.

And ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call. Thank you for your participation. You may all disconnect.