Hey. Hi, good day to everyone. Welcome to join Advantech's third quarter results conference call co-hosted by Credit Suisse. This is Pauline Chen. I'm the Tech Analyst at Credit Suisse. Today, we are very happy to have Advantech's management team, Eric Chen, President of General Management and CFO, Miller Chang, President of Embedded IoT, and Grace Liao, IR Manager, to answer any question you may have. Grace will start from third quarter review, followed by management team's key highlight on the outlook, and we can go to the Q&A session. Before we start, just a gentle reminder, please change your name with company name on the back, so it's easier for us to recording. Dear Grace, you may start now. Thank you. Thank you, Pauline. Good morning, and good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for your time today. This is Grace Liao, the IR Manager of Advantech. According to our meeting agenda, I will give our third quarter 2021 financial results and hand over to Mr. Eric Chen, our CFO and President of General Management for business update and fourth quarter guidance. Also in Q&A section, we also invite Mr. Miller Chang, the President of our Embedded IoT, to give us his view regarding the business trend. As usual, please take a few seconds to see the safe harbor notice. For the third quarter 2021 financial results, please see the table here. Our third quarter sales revenue reached TWD 14.5 billion, increased 19% year-on-year, which also set a new company records. For the gross margin rate was 36.8%, slightly improved on a quarter-over-quarter basis. However, declined 3% compared to the same period last year. For operating profit was TWD 2.6 billion, increased 19% quarter-over-quarter due to a gross margin rate slightly recovered and also benefit from the operating leverage. For the net income reached TWD 2.27 billion, increased 17% year-over-year and also 27% quarter-over-quarter. For the earnings per share in Q3 was TWD 2.95. For the year to third quarter 2021 performance, sales revenue reached TWD 42.9 billion, increased 12% year-over-year. Gross margin rate was 37.6%, while operating margin rate reached 16.5%. Accumulated non-operating item increased 69% year-on-year due to two reason: disposal gain on the fixed assets for TWD 85 million and also gain from financial assets for TWD 44 million. For our year-to-date third quarter earnings per share reached TWD 7.74. For the overall performance in terms of U.S. dollars, the year-to-date third quarter 2021 revenue reached $1.5 billion, increased 19% year-on-year. For the major three markets, including North America, Europe and China, accounts for over 70% of the total revenue. China market was the biggest contributor and enjoyed 37% year-on-year growth for the first three quarters. Europe market also performed quite aggressively with 17% year-on-year growth due to macro recovery in pan-Europe. Overall, North Asia increased 9% year-over-year. Please see the detailed breakdown here. Both of our Japan and South Korea branch outperformed with 14% and 22% year-over-year growth, respectively. However, Advantech Technologies Japan, ATJ, was still relatively weak with 6% year-over-year decline. Other Asia and the EMEA market overall increased 38% year-over-year. Both MEA market and also India market was the best performers with 103% and also 36% year-over-year growth due to macro projects contribution. Okay. For the strategic business group performance, you can see in the table Industrial IoT was the biggest BU, accounts for over 1/3 of our total revenue and also enjoyed 35% year-on-year growth in the first three quarters due to new infrastructure demand from China and also semiconductor IEM smart upgrade. You can see the Embedded IoT increased 15% year-on-year due to recovery demand from major markets. For Service-IoT increased 27% year-on-year, driven by smart medical projects. In all business group, only Applied Computing Group, ACG, declined 7% year-on-year, mainly due to low season between projects and also ATJ underperform. For working capital and the balance sheets, Advantech generating over TWD 7 billion for cash in third quarter 2021, maintaining the high cash level, indicating we are quite sufficient in working capital. For inventory, turnover days still higher than historical level due to aggressively inventory build for order shipments. That's for the last page for my presentation for the third quarter financial results. I will pass the time to Mr. Eric Chen to share the business update and also the fourth quarter financial guidance. Let's welcome Eric. Thank you. Hello, everyone. Good afternoon and good evening. Good morning, okay. This is Eric Chen. Allow me to give some business update and the quarterly outlook. Our assumption in the third quarter was better than our predictions. It was mainly due to the firm bookings in the second quarter. We overcame some material shortages. We conducted spot buys in the gray market to keep the delivery promise to our customers. Hence, the gross margins declined 2.4% year-on-year. Looking at the fourth quarter, some critical ICs, such as Intel LAN chip and TI power IC. The fulfillment status worsened than quarter two. China recently released a new rule to limit electricity consumption to pursue their carbon neutrality in the year 2060. It will bring a negative impact to our production as well as delivery. We estimate 40-50 million orders cannot fulfill during this quarter. On the margin side, the average sale price will steadily increase because of the new price order will be shipped out, this quarter. Therefore, we can improve our margin performance if the material price is stable and the product mix remain the same pattern. Based on the current business outlook, the overall impact of the supply chain, we expect fourth quarter revenue to be between $530 million-$550 million, based on the exchange rate assumption of $1 to TWD 27.9. In terms of margin, the fourth quarter gross margin is expected to be between 36.5% and 38.5%. Operating margin is expected to be between 16% and 18%. This conclude all my update, business update and the fourth quarter guidance. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. We now can move to the Q&A session. We have collected several questions from investors on the line. It can be sorted into several different categories. I think the financial performance would be the first question on the investor's mind. Before we enter into these question list, I do have a few questions followed by Eric's newer Q4 guidance. When you say about the revenue guidance was impacted by the power shortage and also the supply constraint in Intel chip and also TI chip. That TWD 40 million-TWD 50 million revenue impact, do you think. Do you have any view that when it will be recovered? That's the first question. According to our procurement department feedback, it probably have been recovered in the second half of next year. Yeah. For the first half of next year, it could be impossible to recover for some critical IC shortage. Okay. Next year, we can recover in the second half. Okay. Okay, very clear. Regarding your OP margin guidance, I just want to make sure that if I heard it right. In the printed number, it doesn't really show any improvement. In your commentary, did you say that the margin would potentially increase sequentially if raw material and product mix remain stable? Yeah, yeah. Okay. We are struggling to maintain our gross margin to 40%, but it's hard to say because our procurement department feedback, we need the IC, some of the ICs increase the same price in quarter four. I'm not quite sure we can keep the same assumption that the raw materials price can keep as stable as the quarter three. Okay. Got it. Chip price probably will be the swing factor. Yeah. Okay. Got it. Thank you very much. Okay. The financial questions from investor will be on the preliminary outlook for next year. This year has been a very strong year in terms of revenue growth. Do you expect the revenue growth to accelerate or decelerate into next year? Have you factored in any consideration in terms of the chip shortage and also China power restriction? Thank you. Okay. According to our booking record in September and October, the Asia region include China, Japan and Korea, these are core clients. Emerging territory and Taiwan are kept back, while the U.S. and Europe region still in the uptrends. For the preliminary outlook of 2022, we foresee in the first half, the growth momentum will be slightly decelerating due to many supply chain constraints, as we mentioned before. As for the second half, the growth momentum is too early to predict since the future supply chain changes are different. This year sales performance, we expect the total consolidated revenue will exceed $2 billion and reached $1 billion in 2016. That is we double our revenue after eight years. For the year 2022, the management team expect immediate two-digit growth should be a reasonable target. We will release our formal guidance in the quarter one IR meeting, let's say the early March in 2022. This is my answer. Very clear. Thank you. The second question is also regarding your margin target. I remember earlier there was a mid-term target talking about gross margin 40%, OP margin will be somewhere around 16%, over 16%-17% that level. Do you think that kind of margin expectation can be achievable next year or is still achievable on the medium-term basis? It's achievable in the coming year, not next year. Yeah. This year, our gross margin has dropped 2.4% year-on-year. It was mainly due to we conduct the spot buy in the gray market for the shortage component. Those shortage component price in gray market is sky high. Another factor is the raw material. The average price is up. The spot buy and raw material price up impact our gross margin by 0.1% and 1.5% respectively. Bringing total 3.6% negative of our gross margin performance. To ensure our profit were not enrolled by raw material cost up, we adjust our selling price in the second half. Most of the effect take the stream will reflect in the fourth quarter. We believe the price, the gross margin will become better and better. We will steadily recover the gross margin in the near term. We are quite strong confidence that we can improve our gross margin step-by-step. Yeah. Okay. Similar operating margin trend, we keep standard guidance to increase 18.5% in the coming two or three years. Our expense ratio has a great chance to lower to 20%, by driving the top-line continuous growth. Also the operational scale advantage. The overall operating margin are expected to maintain at 18.5%. Yeah. This is my answer to your question. Yeah, very clear. Thank you, Eric. The next question is regarding your capacity expansion plan. Earlier you mentioned about the expansion by 30% level in both China and also Taiwan. Can you give us some update on this capacity expansion plan and also your CapEx number for this year and next year? Thank you. The major portion of CapEx this year is the ongoing Linkou campus phase three construction and two SMT line expansion. The one SMT line were installed in the Linkou manufacturing center, and then the others are in the Kunshan factories. The Linkou phase three total construction fee is around $50 million and is set to complete in the middle of the year 2023. However, since the overall construction period were less than three years, the construction expenditures in year 2021 and year 2022 is around $20 million. Besides our Korea subsidiary, we have purchased four raw building for local service-based business expansions. The total project amounts are around $10 million. Overall, the CapEx in 2021 is about $50 million. In the year 2022 will be $60 million, slightly higher than the year 2021. This my quick answer regarding the CapEx and the capacity. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you, Eric. Regarding the order visibility, the question is about the BB ratio. The main reason for current BB ratio to show some slowdown, what's the reason behind that? Your order visibility, is there any change in your order visibility as well? Thank you. Miller, can you answer this question please? Yeah. I can answer this question. About the BB ratio shows slowing down. Yes, it is. You can see the number from Eric, our financial team. They present our BB ratio to 1.65 [business 4] in Q2 and 1.65 in Q3. Mainly reason is from China. Okay? Because they have very high booking in Q1 and Q2, so they slowing down a little bit from Q3. For USA and also Europe, they are getting better, so their booking is higher than Q2. Compared to Q3, they are getting higher. I think that the average still higher than our previous year. Usually our BB ratio is about 1.2. Very healthy status for our industry. Even though they show some decline. Some decrease, but still higher than our expectation. We are still confident about BB ratio currently. For the order visibility, we did not see any change for our order visibility. Even this Q4 now and to next year Q1 and Q2, we are still very positive. No change for our order visibility or order visibility. Okay. Thank you, Miller. While we have you here, may I have a follow-up question to you? Yeah. I just noticed that, sorry, it's not on question list. I just now noticed that in the presentation when there is a breakdown about Embedded IoT gross margin, actually was slightly down from second quarter level. Mm-hmm. I remember last quarter it was 35%-40%. This quarter it shows 30%-35%. Mm-hmm. What's driving the margin decline? That's because of our business Embedded IoT. About 45%, they are represented from all the board-level product. Board-level product means only like motherboards, small form factor, this kind of the board-level product. Mm-hmm. If the IC component costs go up, they will impact our product profit immediately and very significantly. Okay. That's the main reason. Okay. Very clear. Thank you so much. Thank you. No problem. Yeah. Okay. The follow-up question is regarding the supply chain management. The first question I think Grace and also Eric already mentioned about the bridge. Yeah. Okay. I think the management team also talk about when the inventory balance probably will be in the second half of next year. Regarding the ASP, will you be able to raise the pricing again to mitigate the supply chain impact? If so, when and at what kind of level? Or Um- Is there any other reaction plan? Thank you. Yes. We internally are discussing about our cost up impact to our profit. It's a big problem and also big topic internally. Yes, we are going to discussing about the cost, component cost. Okay. If in Q4 now the cost up issue, the chip IC, especially from LAN chip, Power IC, and mainstream vendor partner their price up, that we will consider to raise up our ASP from next year Q1. Okay? Currently the target is about 3%-6%. Depends on different product division. Okay? Yes, we will consider, and now it's under discussion internally. The range is about 5%-6%. Mm. Formally announce day and release day to be in the year Q1. Got it. If I may add a few follow-up questions regarding this price and also the other mitigation plan. When I talk to other supply chains, general feedback is that it's very difficult to persuade customers, especially in the U.S. and European market, to change their design source. If it's from China customers then maybe it's easier to change the design to the second suppliers. But U.S. and European customer, it's very difficult to do that. Are you seeing the similar situation for your different region? It depends on customer and also their industry. Mm. Okay. For example, in the medical industry, it's quite difficult because of. Mm. We need to face many certification. Okay? Mm. Customer, all normally they won't accept the part, component change. Mm. They will need a very long time to do the certification. That's the challenge. It's not only the cost, but also the development and deliver time. Mm. Okay? For some industry, they are easier for us to change the component, even replace the component to another partner vendor. Mm. That will save some of our cost and also our time to fulfill our customer delivery. Mm. It still depends on the customer outlook and also our service market. Okay. Got it. Okay. Medical is more difficult. How about the IIoT or like energy-related segment? Is it- For the network computing segment, yes, it's still very difficult. Yes. Mm. Mm. As I mentioned, they need a very long time for the engineering certification. Mm, mm. If the segment is regarding to the, like, consumer, no, like Mm. -Retail segment- Mm. It's quite easy for us. Okay. To replace the new model, new chip, to redesign and convince our customer to accept our solution. Very clear. Thank you. Thank you, Miller. The next question is regarding the regional performance. I think the first one will be on China performance in the opening remark. Management team already highlighted the China slowdown starting from third quarter, right? Mm-hmm. I guess we are probably already answered to the first question about the China budget cut and also some slowdown. Do you think that kind of slowdown is more like a temporary, and is there any sign of recovery in your view? I can talk from the other way. Actually, until today, we did not see any customer cancel the order. Okay. From our service sector, different sector in China. We did not see any order postponed from customer in China. Mm. Mm. Okay? Yes, from your question about cash flow, we did not receive any information about customer that report they have any cash flow issue. Mm. So far today, no. Okay? Mm. The status still quite healthy for us. However, the book-to-bill ratio, you see, the number is a little bit lower than Q3, and will continue to be a little bit lower than Q4 because of the year end. Mm. The year end issue probably not only in China but also will impact to other country. Customer may re-plan their order for the next year. Maybe some order adjustment will happen in Q4. Mm. Especially in last month of December this year. Mm. We will see the booking number will be a little bit changed. That's quite normal. Okay. Yeah. The China BB ratio slowdown is mainly because of the year-end adjustment. It's not because of the cash flow or a budget cut issue. Okay. At l- Mm. At least for our service market, we do not see that issue. Okay. Very clear. Okay. From the financial indicators, the DSO, I mean the AR turnover day, and bad debt in China is still very healthy. We don't foresee any DSO, AR issue, outstanding- Mm. issues, at the moment. Yeah. Okay. Thank you, Eric. Regarding the rough sales mix in China, the major segment is green energy and also infrastructure. What's the rough product mix that is not green energy and infrastructure related? Do you have any- I think China this year they are very aggressively to enter the semiconductor industry. Mm. Very, very aggressive. Mm. At this point we also got a lot of orders to support them, the industry. Mm. Mm. for new something 5G. Mm. Everybody knows China for 5G. They are the most aggressive and very aggressive to build up the 5G infrastructure. Mm. This is about this question, not only related to one single sector but almost all various product sector, we are servicing LAN quite very aggressively. Mm, mm. Okay? So if- for some cloud services infra. Mm. Very aggressively. Very positive. Okay. Including cloud, okay. For those segment like semiconductor, green energy, infra and cloud, is there any rough sales mix breakdown? You mean the percentage from the business? Yes, percentage. Percentage would be great. Also, we probably need to give you more precise number after the meeting. Okay, no problem. No problem. Yes. Thank you. On the U.S. market, earlier comment, I think it was from the earlier conference call, there was a commentary talking about the suppliers do not want to change to a second source. Mm-hmm. They also do not expect supply chain constraint to improve until second half of next year, right? Mm-hmm. Would that further push out your U.S. market recovery expectations? Mm. For the U.S. market? Yeah. No, I don't think so. You know, if you see our report for the Q1 and Q2, actually USA and Europe. Mm. They are not so good. Not so aggressively as China, right? Mm, mm. On the second half of this year, from Q3, USA and Europe, they catch up very soon. Mm, mm. Catch up very soon. One reason is because of the component shortage. Some customer they pay to change the component. Mm. They pay for change the component in order to support their production. Mm, mm. Our supply chain and our manufacturing side, they are very aggressively to support USA and Europe their production request. That's one of the reason that USA, even though in the first half of this year, their performance is not so good. From the second half this year for Q3, Q4, we see that they will continue to get back to the growth momentum. Mm. They're quite, very positive. Mm. I even expect that U.S. this year, end of this year, they probably can meet the double-digit growth and continue to have the very same performance in next year. Double digit growth next year. Okay. Yeah. Mm. Yeah. Okay, good. Thank you. Yeah. Okay. In your earlier comment, you, I think the financial outlook when we talk about the first half revenue would decelerate because of the supply constraint. If we try to map that commentary into different business unit business group. Mm-hmm. Which business group is going to see the deceleration? It's more like across the board or relatively which segment will underperform or outperform? You mean that, a different sector by our product division? Yes. Yes. Actually. Yeah. This year until year-to-date, this month. No, yeah, Miller, the question would be more on the first half next year, because I think Eric was talking about the revenue growth would decelerate in first half next year, but accelerate, but second half will be too early to say, right? Yeah. For the first half 2022, the deceleration, if we try to look at your different business segment, IIoT, SIoT, IoT, ACG, et cetera, is the deceleration very similar across different business group or any specific business group will relatively outperform? This year, the [Cash Cow] is our Industrial IoT. Okay. I think it's overall, each of the individual product division have been internally proposing a decelerated growth rate for next year. We will still propose positive growth for next year. The growth rate probably cannot meet like this year 35%, for example, for IIoT last month. Uh, uh. Okay? Overall, we think that every sector will propose a very positive growth rate for next year. On the Europe market, the year-on-year growth has been increasing recently. Mm-hmm. What's the key drivers? Oh, yeah. They're very similar to USA First one is their order fulfillment rate is higher than Quarter first half. Mm, mm. Okay? That's because of, as I mentioned earlier, our factory, our supply chain. Mm. We provide big support to our Europe and USA region. Mm. Support their the product ordering can fulfill to our customer delivery on time. Mm. That's the big reason. Second is everyone knows that because of COVID impact, the USA and Europe, the cities are back to reopen from the beginning of the Q2. Mm. That's the main reason our booking, our fulfillment, our ordering process gap is mostly from Q3. Mm. That's the main reason. Not a particularly Mm. Particularly special sector that got a higher growth momentum. No. Every sector we have seen the effective growth. It's not really automation outperforming or retail outperforming. It's more like a reopening and order fulfillment rate is improving. Okay. For next year, the strategic business group, if you can kindly give us some ranking about the growth rate by different, Mm-hmm. Business group, okay, for next year. Just a rough ranking of who will relatively outperform. I know you said that every BU is working very hard to, you know, to grow, but it would be nice to just have some rough idea. Yeah. Actually, that now is still under our internal discussion. Mm-hmm. Actually, Q4 is a big season for us. Everybody, every division and sales team, our regional office, we have a very intensive discussion back and forth. Mm. Actually right now, still under discussion. Mm. I don't have any numbers I can provide for you. As I mentioned earlier, overall, our company, we expect that we still maintain 10% more growth- Mm. Mm. Mm. for next year. This is for sure. Mm. Based on the guideline, product division leader and regional sales leader, we are interacting very intensively to try to perform our target. If there is any risk you can think of for next year. Mm. What would that be? Still material shortage. Okay. Material shortage. Because I can support to answer the question from our supply chain and vendor. Right? Mm. Mm. Mm. For example, like our main, second partner, supplier. Mm. They even told us they cannot fix the issue next year Q1, Q2, so I cannot support to answer the question for them. Mm. Mm. If the supply chain constraint issue still happen in Q2, even Q3, the situation will not so good for us. Mm. Mm. The big potential risk is still the material shortage. Got it. Very clear. Okay. The next question will be regarding the AIoT ecosystem. Chairman mentioned about, shared about this ambition and also the new plan for AIoT last time. What's the estimate financial cost of the investment in the software and SRP and as well as the new business unit? We can try to answer these questions that the major portion of investment is in OpEx comes from people cost. Most of our things come from people cost. It accounts for more than 70% of total OpEx. We have invested more than 250 software engineers. Also the consulting focuses on the WISE-PaaS platform's development and the vertical industrial solution business development. The total investment cost is around $15 million per year, accounting for 1.5% of our total OpEx. This is our investment, especially in the people cost, total $15 million. Even though the AIoT platform and the solution business revenue contribution were not big so far, the team is confident that they can meet the breakeven point in three years. They have a strong commitment to meet the breakeven point maybe in the next two, in the next three years. Regarding your questions, the total cost investment mainly from the people cost and Mm. Roughly around $15 million per year. Okay, 1.5% of the OpEx. If we consider this together, what's the rough OpEx ratio we should be using for next year? OpEx ratio, I guess, is around 20%-21%. Yeah. 20%-21%. Okay. Got it. Thank you. Thank you, Eric. Is there any indicator to evaluate your IoT platform? I remember earlier there were some numbers talking about membership penetration rate in major markets. Is there anything we can try to get better view about your progress on the IoT platform? Normally, we have three indicator to evaluate the performance of our IoT platform. The first one is your VIP membership, just as you mentioned earlier. The second one is revenue target. This year we changed. We established three business unit service business unit, and they account for the revenue target. The revenue also one of their targets, especially for the growth rate. Their growth momentum is very strong, and the fee base is small. Mm. The last is the number of eco partner we call co-creation partner, although main focus SIs. We use these three indicators to trace our AIoT platform performance. Okay. That kind of data, can we see that in your website? How many partners and how many membership? Is that available? Not really. In our campaign, I guess in our WISE-PaaS event or webinar, we also elaborate this kind of numbers for our audience. It's not so confidential. Mm, mm. We don't put this data, this information in our corporate website. Okay. Very clear. Thank you, Eric. The last two questions. One is regarding the competition landscape. I think some of your competitors are turning more aggressive in China and Europe, and what's your view on that? The second one is that they are also seeking more aggressively for strategic alliance with key supplier like MediaTek. Yeah. You can share your view regarding that. It would be great. Thank you. Okay. Well, I'll Yeah, I'll try to answer that. Let me try to answer this question and ask Miller or Eric to add on more information on this. First of all, I think Ennoconn was a respectful peer to Advantech for sure. However, in China, I think we used to be worried about the China competition, because Ennoconn is trying to looking after or coming after for our customers. However, after time proven that our proposition value is quite different, is more like a total solution provider versus like Edge, we're hardware kind of a provider. In customer point of view, we are not in the same level of a comparison. Also our customer overlap is quite limited. As a result, we can trace back for the contribution from China market. Actually, China is quite recent in our regional design and also right now officially being the biggest contributor of our total business. Actually, I guess in China, the competition is quite, I think the whole pressure is quite limited to us. However, in Europe market, actually Ennoconn is more alliance with like Kontron or S&T, which is a European-based IPC company with very high reputation. I think the competition is more challenging than our imagination. However, Advantech's strategy in Europe market is trying to improve the on-site design capability as soon as possible. For example, we also build up our R&D center in Germany, and also build up like a technical support on site in pan-Europe market. Actually, I have to say, right now is about to bear fruit. As you can see that our performance in European markets quite aggressive recently, and could be sustained quite good potential growth in the future. I think our strategy in Europe is quite successful because we improve ourselves as a solution provider in the same level comparison with the European-based company. Right now, I think more and more recognition for our customers in pan-Europe. Back to your second question, I think the strategic alliance with MediaTek, VIA, and also Google, with Innodisk, I think all the synergy for the alliance remains to be seen. Because I think the first two, MediaTek and also VIA is more like a partner in the private label projects. For Google, it's more like a digital transformation partner. With quite limited information right now, we don't see any like a real business strategy level kind of collaboration. Instead, we only see maybe like in financial wise or even like a system or base wise kind of a cooperation so far. I think that all the synergies has to remain to be watched. On the other hand, I think the most challenging for Innodisk right now is the DFI has quite aggressive fundraising plan right now. It's kind of challenging for Innodisk to keep delivering in financial wise in the coming years. I think it's, that's the reason why for capital market it's a, it holds more like conservative view toward the whole pace. That's my answer to this question. Maybe Eric or Miller could add on some information. Yeah. Thank you. Okay. This is Miller speaking. Actually, we should not comment for our peer company. We should only follow our own way to keep strengthening our business. Mm-hmm. Actually, you can see our number, our default number year to year. Our China and Europe, we are still growth very significantly. In China, 37% year-to-year growth. In Europe, 17% growth. Very strong growth momentum. Even though those are head-to-head competition with many peer companies, but we're still very strong. We have very strong position in China and Europe. Mm-hmm. That's the very simple answer to your question. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Very clear. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. Regarding for the alliance partner, for sure, for the silicon partner like Intel, AMD, NVIDIA, and NXP, also the software partner vendor like Microsoft, we are their former distributor in worldwide region, every country. We have a very big number of the Microsoft software distribution business with Microsoft for more than 15 years. Those kind of alliance partner is for a long-term partnership and business cooperation, Advantech with our partner together. Mm-hmm. Yeah. That's my answer. Thank you, Miller. Thank you, Grace. Yeah. I think Miller, you highlight one interesting point that is very important to just focus on what you can do and improve. That would lead to my next question regarding how do you retain your R&D talent? Because earlier you also mentioned about engineer is very important, right? Can you share with us or maybe Eric, I don't know. Can you share with us how Advantech plans to retain those engineer and also the R&D talent? What's the incentive you are providing to keep them to work with Advantech? Thank you. That's a very good question. I got the same question many times recently. Yeah. I just give you some insight. The retention for engineering and also other staff, most important is the topic that they are interested to work with Advantech continuously. The second is compensation. The very easy answer. The compensation is not only one choice. We need to give them a topic, the direction, what the next new product and solution Advantech want to provide to our market, right? If we can continue to innovate for our product and solution we provide to our customer, then our employee will very interesting to stay with us, to support us, to deliver, develop, implement the new solution and product and solution to our customer. That's a big topic for us to retain our talent to work with Advantech continuously. Thank you. Very clear. Yeah. The last question would be the GIRC. What's the next region according to your GIRC plan? We launched the GIRC program in the year 2020, as I remember. Under GIRC concept, each regional organization structure covers a set of business, corporate management and develop and Advantech service parts. You know, before we called it AS+, but right now we're changing the name to Advantech Service Plus. In the new structure, the current subsidiary will not be a pure sales office function only. Still, it will also focus on local competence development, such as talent incubation, ESG, and brand awareness and local service business developments. The progression of GIRC has gone smoothly so far. The region include Japan. We just merged AJP and ATJ as a one go-to-market, start from next year, this January. We also have refined our organization structures for both entities. Korea, we also bring the Korea GIRC projects in Taiwan and Hong Kong region, and has settled down with the new GIRC reporting structures, organization structure and the partners. Right now we are under discussion about the North America. We just started a program to discuss the North America managing directors and expect to be complete in quarter one of next year. The Europe region will be the last region to implement GIRC because there are so many countries in the European region. It's more difficult to handle the GIRC concept in the Europe region. We put the Europe as the last region to implement. So far we almost complete all the regions, also include China. I expect the APAC, the USA and the Europe region. Okay, got it. Very clear. Thank you. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's the question I got from the online. Just a reminder, if you would like to ask question, you can also try to raise your hand. Pauline, I guess, Baillie Gifford investor, Daniel Ryan, is raising his hand. Yeah. Daniel, yeah. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Hello, Daniel. You may. Yes. Can you hear me now? Yes. Right. We can hear you. Yeah. Thank you. Perfect. Thanks for taking my question, and thanks for giving us this overview, and then possibility to join in. Actually, I would like to dig a little bit deeper into the supply chain issues. Can you give us maybe a rough understanding, what are the process nodes that you see the most shortage in, especially with regards to your business, of course. I would expect that most of the chips you are using are anyway advanced nodes. But how does this play out? Where do you see the biggest shortages? When do you see the shortages, are they currently expected to loosen into second half year in 2022. Is this basically true for all the nodes or are there just some process nodes that might be available earlier on? Thank you for your question, Daniel. I will pass this question to Miller Chang. Thank you. Okay. The supply chain shortage is I have to say from the partner vendor point of view, the supply chain issue is getting better compared to Q2, Q1. The situation is better. Now is only some limited shortage from the supplier, mainly from the IC partner, as I mentioned earlier, for Wi-Fi, main chip IC, and also some power IC, power management IC, which is quite serious. Some of the parts we only can get 30% of the supplier about our total requested demand. However, our procurement team and our supply chain is pushing partner work with partner very closely to get the almost at the conference discussion every day to push more allocation. That's one of the reason we can still fulfill some major customer requests. This is one way. The other way, for some new design solution, we will try to dig into the second source development policy. Second source vendor, our engineering team will also work with the second source partner to evaluate their solution, can replace the existing supplier. Add on more supply chain, supply material demand. This is second way that we can do. Try to get a better supplier, whatever from the first vendor or the second partner, second vendor. The third way is we are trying to convince our customer to pay for the extra cost that allows us to buy from the spot market. This depends on customer, their decision. Some of our customer, their demand is very urgent. Their request, their end customer can pay for the extra cost increase, so that the customer will willing to pay for the extra cost. In this way, then we will also buy for them, buy the material from the spot market that can also speed up our product production and delivery. Yeah, we take many way to support our customer. The only one purpose for us is try to support our customer delivery can be very smoothly and also on time for their request. I hope I answered your question. Yeah, thank you. To some extent, yes. Can you give a maybe more specific view on the process nodes that you are using? A follow-up to your answer would be, how long does it take to get the certification for a second source? Is this different, I guess, depending on the industry vertical, right? For the second source material certification, it depends on the chip and the component. For example, if this is just a DRAM IC, that may only take one or two weeks for certification, right? If this is the power IC, as I mentioned earlier, for the big shortage item, because the power management design is very important for a system and also for all of our product, that will take at least three months for the evaluation internally, not including customer evaluation. It will take a big effort for not only Advantech but also our customer side to do the product performance evaluation. It depends on different product and component shortage. Yes, Advantech internally, our engineering team, we have a quite formal process implementation that can support our different product division, their product and component evaluation, very efficiently. Yeah. Okay. A final one, also basically a follow-up on your answer. Given the shortages, especially on the power management ICs, which is at least generally on the market, when you listen to many market participants, is expected to last longest. Why do companies refrain to certify second sources or even third sources if it takes, let's say, just three months? Because the shortages are likely to take much longer than that to be solved, right? Yeah. I don't want to point this individual as power management IC supplier. Actually, everyone in the industry know that they have a big coverage for all different kind of the IC component. Okay. I have to say, almost every product division internally have already used their product for a long time. People don't want to understand why the shortages will impact so much, but actually it is. Yes, as you mentioned, for a new product solution, we are gradually evaluate the second source. But for the existing product division, as I mentioned earlier, not only Advantech we need to evaluate the power management IC for three months, our customer and their customer also need to a long-term, long time for evaluation and get the certification. This is a big problem for both Advantech and our customer. It's not only a three months job, it's a three months plus three months and also a certification. Quite a critical, long time. Okay. I hope I answered your question. How long would you expect it would take in some cases? Does it take them, I don't know, nine months or even a year to get the full certification for certain products? If you have a specific customer from the industry, I can support to answer your question. Okay, perfect. Thank you very much for answering it. No problem. Well, thank you, Daniel. I guess Patrick Chen of the CLSA is raising his hand. Please, Patrick. Thank you. Sorry, I was muted again. Yeah. Thank you, Grace, and thank you, Pauline Chen. I have a question on inventory. Do you expect the fourth quarter inventory days of inventory to further rise? Is there a targeted inventory level that you are seeing amidst this component tightness situations? Okay. Thank you, Patrick. I will leave the question to you, Eric. Yes. You're talking about the inventory level, right, in the fourth quarter. Yeah, DOI. Yeah. Yeah. Internally, we call DOH. It's a slightly higher than our expectations. Usually we have some key components shortages. We build our inventory level to our certain level to fulfill the strong bookings. Unfortunately, some key IC shortages, so we can deliver the finished goods at the same period. This cause our inventories are a little bit higher than A previous quarter, but we expect the inventory situation will get better and better in the next year. Thank you, Eric. If I may follow up on your 4Q revenue guidance. You mentioned that there is around TWD 40 million-TWD 50 million orders that cannot be fulfilled. May I ask, can you, like, separate the impact from the China power crunch and the component tightness? Like, how much of that TWD 40 million-TWD 50 million is a result of China electricity limitation and how much of that is a result of component shortages? Actually, in our Kunshan region, there is no restriction for power consumption, but we are afraid our suppliers in China may encounter same situations. We are the only company with five factories in Kunshan that are free for power consumption because our electricity consumption rate, we do a lot of power energy savings in the past few years. It's quite credible in the government. We are free for power consumption restrictions. But we are afraid our supplier cannot enjoy this kind of offer. I guess maybe I have not the exact number in mind. Maybe it will impact a little bit our capacities. Most come from the supply side, not from Advantech side. Yeah. Thank you, Eric. From the supply side, you do see that worsened from third quarter or is it at a similar level of limitation compared to what you saw in the third quarter? I think slightly worsened than quarter four. Yeah. Okay. Thanks very much for the extra color. Thank you. Well, I guess, due to time limit, maybe we can take one extra question for Phelix. Yeah. Thank you, Grace. Yeah. Once again, just a reminder, if you would like to ask question, please raise your hand or unmute yourself. Thank you. Hello. This is Phelix from Morningstar. I have a question on the order booking and your price hike. Can you give a little bit color on, like, given that the BB ratio has already come down a little bit? Is it, like, correct to assume that the overbooking has come down as well? The second question would be on, like, given that the BB ratio has come down, do you think after the possible price increase in 1Q, do you expect any further price adjustments after that? Okay. Thank you, Phelix. Regarding the two questions you are asking, I will pass the BB ratio question to Miller. Okay. Thank you, Miller. On the BB ratio come down, yes, it shows some issue from the overbooking. Okay? If our throughput line and our fulfillment rate getting higher, the BB ratio will also come down, right? I have to say, overbooking is one of the issue, but not big. Our supply getting better to support our customer also cause the BB ratio come down. That mean our shipment, you see the number from the Q3, our shipment increased from the Q2 to Q3, right? It also index for our supply chain status getting better in Q3. Okay. Okay. Thank you, Miller. Regarding the second question of Phelix asking for the pricing issue, I will pass the question to Eric. Just as I mentioned earlier, we have price parity integration in the second half, and most of the orders, the new order with the new price will ship in quarter four. We foresee in quarter four the margin side ASP will gradually improve. This is for quarter four. However, our procurement have prepared some ICs still increasing their selling price. Internally, just as Miller mentioned, we have internal discussion about how to set the price guidance regarding the next year, next first half. Internally, we tend to increase our product, our selling price. In product level, we intend to increase around 6%. For system level, it around 3%. It's around 3%-6%. The range is between 3%-6%. This is our guidance. We just communicate with our country sales head. We will have a formal action plan released in the quarter one, no later than quarter one, regarding the selling price guidance. Yeah. Well, thank you, Phelix. I hope Eric and Miller do answer your question. Pauline, I think we do have time's up, so maybe. Yes. Thank you, Grace. Thank you, Eric. Thank you, Miller. Yeah, it has been a very wonderful discussion and very insightful. Thanks everyone for joining us today. I'm just wondering if the management team would like to do any closing remark? No. I guess we have full stop. Yeah. Thank you. It's such a long call. Okay. Thanks everyone for joining us today, and you may now all disconnect. Thank you.