Fri, Nov 29, 2024 page12

• WinWay hopeful about rising AI testing demand

  • By Lisa Wang / Staff Reporter
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  WinWay Technology Co (穎崴), a chip testing interface supplier, yesterday said it aims to grow revenue by a double-digit percentage next year, thanks to rising demand for advanced testing services for artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing (HPC) chips.

  The AI boom has boosted demand for WinWay’s high-speed coaxial sockets, vertical probe cards and functional burn-in sockets this year, chairman Mark Wang (王嘉煌) said at a news conference in Taipei. A sizeable portion of the firm’s coaxial sockets and hyper sockets are used in HPC and AI chips.

  WinWay’s revenue in the first 10 months of this year soared more than 50 percent year-on-year to NT$4.91 billion (US$151 million), the company said.

  

  WinWay Technology Co chairman Mark Wang poses for a photograph in Taipei yesterday.

  Photo: Grace Hung, Taipei Times

  “The fourth-quarter orders received should push up our revenue this year to surpass the record hit in 2022,” Wang said. “We are optimistic about next year. We anticipate a double-digit percentage growth from this year.”

  Since the lifecycle of AI chips is shrinking to about one year or one-and-a-half years, from two years in the past, such changes are stimulating demand for WinWay’s more complex testing services such as functional burn-in testing, Wang said.

  As customer demand would be robust next year, WinWay plans to expand probe card capacity by about 50 percent, Wang said.

  By the middle of next year, the company would see its probe card capacity surge to 4.5 million units a month, from 3 million units currently, he said.

  Asked about potential impact of the imminent tariff hikes planned by US president-elect Donald Trump, Wang said it was hard to have a big picture yet.

  However, the impact on WinWay should be very mild, as most of its direct customers are based in Taiwan, including foundry companies, chip packagers and chip testers, or their overseas operations in Southeast Asia, he said.

  Only a small portion of its products are shipped to the US, he said.

  WinWay has sales offices in the US and sees no urgent need to operate manufacturing facilities there, he added.

  By region, North America made up about 61 percent of the company’s total revenue in the first three quarters of this year. Taiwan accounted for 24 percent.

  WinWay is considering building one manufacturing facility in Malaysia over the next one to two years in response to customer demand for an alternative manufacturing site outside China and Taiwan, Wang said.

  The company last year set up a sales and technology center in Penang, Malaysia, where Intel Corp and the world’s major chipmakers have operations, vice president Jason Chen (陳紹焜) said.

  WinWay plans to establish a Malaysian subsidiary next year, as the country has become one of the world’s semiconductor hubs, given its robust growth of 7 percent in semiconductor production value over the past five years, he said.

  The company reported that net profit in the first three quarters of this year more than doubled to NT$828 million from NT$406 million in the same period last year. That translated into earnings per share of NT$24.08, up from NT$11.84 a year earlier.
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