Himax Decides to Exercise Options to Fully Acquire Emza Visual Sense

TAINAN, Taiwan, March 29, 2018 -- Himax Technologies, Inc. (Nasdaq:HIMX) (“Himax” or “Company”), a leading supplier and fabless manufacturer of display drivers and other semiconductor products, today announced that it has decided to exercise its options to fully acquire Emza Visual Sense Ltd. (“Emza”). Terms of the investment were not disclosed. The transaction is expected to close by the end of the second quarter, 2018.

Emza is an Israeli company dedicated to the development of extremely efficient visual sensors that include proprietary machine-vision algorithms and specific architectures that enable always-on visual sensing capabilities, achieving orders of magnitude improvement in power consumption, price and form factor. Aiming at the booming computer vision market, Himax made a strategic cash investment for 45.1% equity of Emza in April 2017, with one-year options to acquire the remaining 54.9% of Emza’s equity and all outstanding stock options. The acquisition will allow Himax to fully leverage the synergy between the two companies into producing visual sensors that integrate camera, hardware and algorithms and operate at unprecedented power, cost and size. Emza will continue as it is after the acquisition, and will maintain Emza company brand as well as the WiseEye® brand product lines.

“With the full acquisition of Emza, Himax will be uniquely positioned for IoT solutions, which require tight integration of the critical skills and knowledge of Himax’s CMOS technology and ASIC design with Emza’s computer vision algorithms. Himax will be positioned to offer significant value to our customers and to enter new markets beyond consumer electronics, such as connected homes, smart buildings and security, and extend our reach into new IoT markets with interest in other Himax products such as our 3D sensing solutions,” said Jordan Wu, CEO of Himax.

“Our team members are excited about becoming part of the Himax family. The synergy between the two companies and our mutual skills will accelerate the development of highly integrated turn-key IoT solutions to take machine learning-based computer vision applications to a whole new level of performance, price and autonomy. We will continue to pursue the IoT market and customers,” said Yoram Zylberberg, CEO of Emza.

About Emza Visual Sense Ltd.

Emza Visual Sense develops sub-milliwatt, trainable, low-cost, autonomous, tiny computer-vision IoT sensors for automatic scene interpretation of the visual world around us. The low cost, ultra low power consumption and high intelligence make our visual sensors applicable and affordable to a wide range of markets and applications – from accurate counting and tracking of people in smart buildings and connected homes to people awareness for home appliances.  Emza’s visual sensors are smaller than a coin, consume less than 1mW and reduce cost by an order of magnitude.  Our proprietary algorithms are embedded at the edge and are specially designed for extremely thin computing cores and a unique ultra-low power CMOS image sensor. Emza explores the limits of what can be achieved with minimal resolution, frame rate, processing power, memory size, power consumption and cost.

http://www.emza-vs.com

About Himax Technologies, Inc.

Himax Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ:HIMX) is a fabless semiconductor solution provider dedicated to display imaging processing technologies. Himax is a worldwide market leader in display driver ICs and timing controllers used in TVs, laptops, monitors, mobile phones, tablets, digital cameras, car navigation, virtual reality (VR) devices and many other consumer electronics devices. Additionally, Himax designs and provides controllers for touch sensor displays, in-cell Touch and Display Driver Integration (TDDI) single-chip solutions, LED driver ICs, power management ICs, scaler products for monitors and projectors, tailor-made video processing IC solutions, silicon IPs and LCOS micro-displays for augmented reality (AR) devices and head-up displays (HUD) for automotive. The Company also offers digital camera solutions, including CMOS image sensors and wafer level optics for AR devices, 3D sensing and machine vision, which are used in a wide variety of applications such as mobile phone, tablet, laptop, TV, PC camera, automobile, security, medical devices and Internet of Things. Founded in 2001 and headquartered in Tainan, Taiwan, Himax currently employs around 2,150 people from three Taiwan-based offices in Tainan, Hsinchu and Taipei and country offices in China, Korea, Japan and the US. Himax has 3,032 patents granted and 424 patents pending approval worldwide as of December 31th, 2017. Himax has retained its position as the leading display imaging processing semiconductor solution provider to consumer electronics brands worldwide.

http://www.himax.com.tw 

Forward Looking Statements

Factors that could cause actual events or results to differ materially include, but not limited to, general business and economic conditions and the state of the semiconductor industry; market acceptance and competitiveness of the driver and non-driver products developed by the Company; demand for end-use applications products; reliance on a small group of principal customers; the uncertainty of continued success in technological innovations; our ability to develop and protect our intellectual property; pricing pressures including declines in average selling prices; changes in customer order patterns; changes in estimated full-year effective tax rate; shortages in supply of key components; changes in environmental laws and regulations; exchange rate fluctuations; regulatory approvals for further investments in our subsidiaries; our ability to collect accounts receivable and manage inventory and other risks described from time to time in the Company's SEC filings, including those risks identified in the section entitled "Risk Factors" in its Form 20-F for the year ended December 31, 2017 filed with the SEC, as may be amended.

Company Contacts:

Jackie Chang, CFO
Himax Technologies, Inc.
Tel: +886-2-2370-3999 Ext.22300
Or
US Tel: +1-949-585-9838 Ext.252
Fax: +886-2-2314-0877
Email: [email protected]
www.himax.com.tw

Ophelia Lin, Investor Relations
Himax Technologies, Inc.
Tel: +886-2-2370-3999 Ext.22202
Fax: +886-2-2314-0877
Email: [email protected]
 www.himax.com.tw

Ken Liu, Investor Relations
Himax Technologies, Inc.
Tel: +886-2-2370-3999 Ext.22513
Fax: +886-2-2314-0877
Email: [email protected]
www.himax.com.tw

Investor Relations - US Representative
Greg Falesnik, Managing Director
MZ North America
Tel: +1-212-301-7130
Email: [email protected]
www.mzgroup.us