Omnivision Earnings Call

Omnivision reported lower than expected earnings but higher revenue. As expected, the company trimmed down the next quarter guidance. Seeking Alpha conference call transcript adds more information on Omnvision's business:

• VGA and below was 70% of revenue.
• Gross margin was 25.2% compared to 27.2% previous quarter. Excluding stock compensation, gross margin was 25.7%, down from the 27.7%.
• VisEra, the color filter and micro lens JV with TSMC is preparing for Omnivision's eventual migration to 300mm wafer production.
• In smart phone market Omnivision takes market share from competitors, which will drive higher volume shipments this quarter for 2MP, 3M and further 5MP sensors.

The call also has an interesting mention of lens on dye technology:

Doug Freedman - American Technology Research:

Can you talk a little bit about where the company stands on lens on dye technology? And where you see that fitting in?

Bruce Weyer, VP of Marketing:

Obviously, we stay on the cutting edge of technology that you seen with the OmniBSI architecture announcement we made. And certainly lens on dye technologies are something that everyone is monitoring closely and considering for the next generation in the market. So certainly we got our eye on that technology and we are doing internal assessments and if not yet this time announce any technology that into the marketplace but we continue to monitor that and we will discuss that at the appropriate time.

Doug Freedman:

Is this impact ownership that all liability at the industry was just switch to lens on dye type of product?

Peter Leigh, CFO:

I think the short answer is no. I mean first of all our ownership interest we then take is reasonably small and we are not going to allow our ownership at a small stage in a CSP supplier to have a major impact on our choices about technology. That’s just not possible.

No analyst asks questions on the status of BSI and TrueFocus technologies. After a wave of downgrades, it looks like nobody sees them as a meaningful boost for Omnivision.

Talking about the BSI status, the company only tells that "all of the tier-1 mobile phones suppliers have expressed strong interest in our BSI-based designs." and "Our 5 megapixel and 8 megapixel OmniBSI architectures are generating strong interest among the mobile phone makers. We already engaged in our first specific design activity as a Tier 1 customer. We look forward to sharing detailed information about these exciting products in the near future."

No explicit word was said about BSI product sampling promised first in June, then in July. To me this looks like a sign of BSI having some serious problems making it un-sampleable.

Update: Probably "lens on dye" is badly transcribed "lens on die". So Doug Friedman asks about wafer level cameras.