Photronics, Inc. (NASDAQ:PLAB) Q4 2022 Results Conference Call December 13, 2022 8:30 AM ET

Company Participants

Richelle Burr - Executive Vice President, Chief Administrative Officer

Frank Lee - Chief Executive Officer

John Jordan - Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer

Chris Progler - Chief Technology Officer

Conference Call Participants

Hans Chung - D.A. Davidson

Gus Richard - Northland Capital Markets

Operator

Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Photronic's Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2022 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speakers’ presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] Please be advised that today’s conference is being recorded Tuesday, December 13, 2022.

I would now like to hand the conference over to your host, Richelle Burr, Executive Vice President, Chief Administrative Officer and General Counsel. Please go ahead.

Richelle Burr

Thank you, Richelle. Good morning, everyone. Welcome to our review of Photronic's fiscal 2022 full year and fourth quarter results. Joining me to [indiscernible] evaluate ongoing performance and reconciliation of these metrics to GAAP financial results is provided in our presentation peril.

At this time, I will turn the Frank over -- I will turn the call over to Frank.

Frank Lee

Thank you, Richelle, and good morning, everyone. Q4 was solidly finished to a great year. Revenue grew 24% in 2022 as we achieved our fifth consecutive year of record revenue. Both IC and FPD generated strong growth as design activity remained robust. We saw annual growth across nearly all products types. It remains clear that our broad technology portfolio, operation effects and close customer relationships have met us the market leader.

Q4 revenue was less than third quarter revenue, with demand slowing in high-end large lastly. Our investment will be indicated by the current semiconductor industry downturn as design activity remains relatively strong. There was also some negative impact from depreciation of Asian currencies on FPD business. However, we believe that factor causing this slower demand with the transit, and we maintain our positive view on the long-term demand trend.

Gross margin and operation margin was essentially flat compared with the third quarter as we motivate the impact on lower borrowings by closely managing our costs while we continue to benefit from strong pricing. We also realized a foreign exchange gain that John will discuss in more detail later. The end result is we delivered EPS of $0.60 for fourth quarter.