Progate Group Corp (巨有科技), an application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) developer, said it expects revenue to grow this year, backed by rapidly growing demand for artificial intelligence (AI) chips, given the rise in AI applications, from cloud to edge devices.
“We are expecting growth momentum to pick up this year following the end of inventory correction,” Progate CEO Fred Lai (賴志賢) said on Thursday.
The company has received more than 80 chip designing projects, which would generate non-recurring engineering (NRE) revenue for Progate, like most ASIC companies, he said.
Photo: Lisa Wang, Taipei Times
About 20 percent of those projects are based on 28-nanometer or advanced technologies, Lai said.
As AI applications are proliferating to edge devices, Progate is seeing a spike in demand for high-performance and energy efficient ASICs, he said.
“With more design projects coming in, we are holding an optimistic view about this year. Not a cloud in the sky,” Lai said.
Progate is also upgrading its technology capabilities to help design 6-nanometer chips, he said, adding that the company had taped-out its first 6-nanometer chip in February.
A major portion of the NRE projects last year were designed on less-advanced technologies, such as 65-nanometer, 90-nanometer and 0.11-micron technologies, Lai said.
The company plans to hire an additional 10 to 20 research-and-development engineers to cope with growing customer demand, he added.
The company has seen a 25 percent revenue pick up to NT$285 million (US$9.49 million) over the past four months. Last year, Progate posted an annual decline of 38 percent in revenue to NT$682 million.
About 35 percent of last year’s revenue came from NRE income and 65 percent from payments after customers’ chips entered mass production.
The company’s shareholders on Thursday approved a cash dividend of NT$1.6 per common share.
The company saw net profit plummet about 61 percent to NT$63 million last year. That translated into earnings per share of NT$1.65.
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