ST Reports Strong FlightSense Sales

ST Micro reports Q2 2017 results. Regarding the imaging business, the company says "As anticipated, Imaging revenues in the second quarter decreased slightly on a sequential basis to $68 million, while we prepare for the ramp of new programs.

On a year-over-year basis, Imaging revenues increased 60% in the second quarter, and for the first half 2017 rose 83% to $140 million driven by ST’s innovative Time-of-Flight technology.

In the second quarter we continued to gain design-wins while delivering high volumes of our “FlightSense” Time-of-Flight proximity and ranging sensors to multiple smartphone OEMs. We now have reached cumulative shipments of over 300 million Time-of-Flight sensors and are in more than 80 smartphone models from 15 different OEMs.

In our Imaging business, we anticipate strong sequential growth, as the key new program ramps in Q3, followed by further revenue acceleration in the fourth quarter of this year."

EETimes speculates that the "key new program ramps in Q3" might mean ToF sensor in Apple iPhone 8.

SeekingAlpha publishes the earnings call transcript with a clarifying question in Q&A session:

Janardan Menon - Liberum Capital Ltd.

And just a brief follow-up on the Time-of-Flight, which is in your other division. After a big jump in the second half of last year, that revenue has sort of flattened out. But you are continuously reporting higher number of models and OEM on that particular product. And now I understand that from the second half, that revenue will increase sharply because of the 3D of the special program.

But just on the Time-of-Flight itself, can you give some reason why that revenue is not really rising as a number of model. Is that price pressure coming there? Or what are the dynamics which is happening there?

Carlo Bozotti - STMicro CEO:

I think on the Time-of-Flight, we have enormous number of customers in our end. Of course, we are also working on new technologies for the Time-of-Flight. So, there would be a new wave, but we are pretty happy that the growth is impressive in Imaging and we are investing a lot for the new initiative. This is visible of course in terms of expenses in the P&L, but we have now sort (47:46) the $300 million business of Time-of-Flight that we want to keep going and we have the opportunity. I think it's pretty good and it's a pretty good business. I would say it's very good business, but in parallel, we are investing on new things and this will make – will allow us to make another important step.