Chip packaging service provider Powertech Technology Inc (力成科技) yesterday raised its projected capital expenditure for this year by 25 percent to NT$50 billion (US$1.59 billion) to step up capacity buildup for advanced packaging technologies, including panel-level packaging (PLP) for chips used in artificial intelligence (AI) applications.
The additional budget would mainly be used for a new facility that it acquired from flat-panel display maker AUO Corp (友達) for NT$6.9 billion, Powertech said.
“The development of our fan-out PLP technology is going smoothly and equipment installation is on schedule,” Powertech chairman Tsai Du-kung (蔡篤恭) said at an earnings conference. “We are set to enter the product qualification process in the second half of this year in preparation for official shipments by the middle of next year.”
Photo: CNA
Powertech aims to become a supplier of fan-out PLP turnkey solutions, Tsai said.
The first-phase fan-out PLP capacity would be ready by the end of this year, he added.
Tsai declined to confirm whether Advanced Micro Devices Inc and Broadcom Inc are two of its major fan-out PLP customers.
Powertech is also developing advanced co-packaged optics technology by integrating optical engines with AI chips, high bandwidth memory chips or switches, Tsai said.
Mass production is projected to start late next year or in 2028, he said.
An optical engine is a specialized component within transceiver modules or imaging devices that converts electrical signals into light signals and vice versa. The technology is expected to be used in next-generation AI servers.
Powertech’s revenue in the first quarter expanded 37.6 percent year-on-year to NT$21.31 billion.
Revenue is projected to increase in the following quarters, with full-year revenue expected to grow by a double-digit percentage this year from last year, Powertech CEO Boris Hsieh (謝永達) said.
Gross margin is also trending up, thanks to price hikes and an optimal product mix, he said.
In the first quarter, gross margin climbed to the highest in six quarters at 19.4 percent, compared with 17.1 percent a year ago and 18.6 percent in the previous quarter.
Net profit soared 56.9 percent year-on-year to NT$1.84 billion from NT$1.18 billion. On a sequential basis, net profit shrank 1.1 percent from NT$1.86 billion.
The growth is driven by supply constraints in AI, high-performance computing (HPC) and memory chips, and chip packaging and testing services, Hsieh said.
“Market supply-demand conditions are still unstable,” Hsieh said. “We are facing a capacity shortage. Booming AI demand has created a crowding-out effect as it eats up a large portion of capacity. We have to stop providing certain services.”
Equipment utilization rate reached 90 percent for its chip packaging lines and 85 percent for its chip testing lines, Powertech said.
Powertech has hiked prices by up to a double-digit percentage in response to tight capacity and price surges in raw materials and precious metals like gold, it said.
The company would negotiate for further price adjustments, if the price upticks in raw materials persist, it said.
SECOND-RATE: Models distilled from US products do not perform the same as the original and undo measures that ensure the systems are neutral, the US’ cable said The US Department of State has ordered a global push to bring attention to what it said are widespread efforts by Chinese companies, including artificial intelligence (AI) start-up DeepSeek (深度求索), to steal intellectual property from US AI labs, according to a diplomatic cable. The cable, dated Friday and sent to diplomatic and consular posts around the world, instructs diplomatic staff to speak to their foreign counterparts about “concerns over adversaries’ extraction and distillation of US AI models.” Distillation is the process of training smaller AI models using output from larger, more expensive ones to lower the costs of training a powerful new
Micron Technology Inc is a driving force pushing the US Congress to pass legislation that would put new export restrictions on equipment its Chinese competitors use to make their chips, according to people familiar with the matter. A US House of Representatives panel yesterday was to vote on the “MATCH Act,” a bill designed to close gaps in restrictions on chipmaking equipment. It would also pressure foreign companies that sell equipment to Chinese chipmaking facilities to align with export curbs on US companies like Lam Research Corp and Applied Materials Inc. The bill targets facilities operated by China’s ChangXin Memory Technologies Inc
Singapore-based ride-hailing and delivery giant Grab Holdings’ planned acquisition of Foodpanda’s Taiwan operations has yet to enter the formal review stage, as regulators await supplementary documents, the Fair Trade Commission (FTC) said yesterday. Acting FTC Chairman Chen Chih-min (陳志民) told the legislature’s Economics Committee that although Grab submitted its application on March 27, the case has not been officially accepted because required materials remain incomplete. Once the filing is finalized, the FTC would launch a formal probe into the deal, focusing on issues such as cross-shareholding and potential restrictions on market competition, Chen told lawmakers. Grab last month announced that it would acquire
The artificial intelligence (AI) boom has triggered a seismic reshuffling of global equity markets, with Taiwan and South Korea muscling past European nations one by one. With its stock market now valued at nearly US$4.3 trillion, Taiwan surpassed the UK, Europe’s biggest market, earlier this month, data compiled by Bloomberg showed. South Korea is about US$140 billion away from doing the same. The tech-heavy Asian markets have shot past Germany and France in the past seven months. The shift is largely down to massive gains in shares of three companies that provide essential hardware for AI: Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電),
RSS