ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said that revenue would return to growth this year, bolstered by restocking demand.
The company expects annual revenue growth to rise by as much as 10 percent, in line with the global semiconductor industry’s recovery.
ASE said it is on track to double its leading-edge packaging revenue to about US$250 million this year.
Photo: CNA
The growth momentum would last through the next few years, it added.
ASE has also been working with a leading foundry supplier on advanced “chip-on-wafer-on-substrate (CoWoS)” packaging technology, it said.
“2024 will be a year of recovery. We will be coming out of inventory adjustment in the first half. We expect growth to accelerate in the second half,” ASE chief operating officer Tien Wu (吳田玉) told investors during a videoconference.
This year, the company’s assembly and test manufacturing (ATM) revenue would grow “at a similar rate with the [global] logic semiconductor market,” Wu said.
SEMI and analysts expect the global semiconductor market to grow between 6 and 10 percent annually, he said.
Robust smartphone sales in China over the past few months indicate that the semiconductor industry is either at the beginning of an upcycle, or the tail end of a prolonged inventory adjustment, Wu said. A majority of ASE’s customers are to return to their “recovery path” from the third quarter, after driving down inventory to healthy levels, he said.
ASE plans to expand equipment capital expenditure by 40 to 50 percent this year from a year earlier, with a major portion of the funds allocated for leading-edge packaging capacity expansion, chief financial officer Joseph Tung (董宏思) said.
Gross margin this year is expected to rebound to the company’s target of between 25 percent and 30 percent, Tung said.
ASE expects ATM revenue this quarter to be flat at NT$73.32 billion (US$2.34 billion) compared with a year earlier, but that would still be better than the typically slow first quarter in the past, when ATM revenue usually dipped between 10 and 15 percent, it said.
Gross margin for the ATM business this quarter would also be similar to a year earlier at about 20.1 percent, it said.
Revenue from its electronics manufacturing services this quarter would be flat at NT$57.73 billion, it added.
ASE’s net profit last quarter grew 7 percent to NT$9.39 billion from NT$8.78 billion the previous quarter.
However, on an annual basis, it slumped 40 percent from NT$15.73 billion.
For the whole of last year, net profit almost halved to NT$31.73 billion from NT$62.09 billion.
Earnings per share dropped to NT$7.39 from NT$14.53, while gross margin slid from 20.1 percent to 15.8 percent.
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