Semiconductor test supplier Advantest Taiwan Inc (愛德萬測試) yesterday said it would take at least six months to deliver its products as a scarcity of key components continues to weigh on its business.
Demand for products, especially automatic equipment for system-on-chip testing, remains strong and is driven by foundries ramping up advanced process technologies, Advantest Taiwan said.
Advantest Corp, the Taiwanese firm’s parent company, had accumulated backlog orders of ￥273.8 billion (US$2.36 billion) as of the end of last year, Advantest Taiwan chairman and president Alex Wu (吳萬錕) told a media briefing in Taipei yesterday.
Tokyo-based Advantest is the world’s largest supplier of memorychip testing equipment.
Although key component availability improved in the fourth quarter of last year, Advantest Taiwan continues to feel the pinch of supply constraints, as semiconductor equipment makers are disadvantaged when competing with other manufacturers, Wu said, citing the smaller scale of their orders.
“We expect the lead time to remain long, starting with half a year,” Wu said. “We expect component shortages to be resolved in the third or fourth quarter.”
Surges in costs of components and raw materials are also a problem for Advantest Taiwan, he said.
The company is seeking to raise prices to reflect higher costs, after holding prices unchanged for one year, he said.
As for the group’s growth prospects, Wu said that 5G devices, high-performance computing chips and vehicle chips would be major drivers this year.
Robust demand from those areas helped boost orders to ￥565 billion for the fiscal year ending on March 31, surpassing its previous estimate of ￥400 billion, he said.
The global system-on-chip test equipment market is expected to expand to US$5 billion this year, Wu said.
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