Kulicke and Soffa Industries Q4 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

Quartr
Provided by Quartr
November 14, 2024

There are 9 speakers on the call.

Operator

Greetings and welcome to the Culikin Safa 20 24 4th Quarter Results Earnings Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen only mode. A question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Joe Oginde, Senior Director, Investor Relations.

Operator

Thank you. You may begin.

Speaker 1

Thank you. Welcome everyone to Culkin's Office fiscal Q4 2024 Conference Call. Susan Chen, President and Chief Executive Officer and Lester Wong, Chief Financial Officer are also joining on today's call. Non GAAP financial measures referenced today should be considered in addition to, not as a substitute for or in isolation from our GAAP financial information. GAAP to non GAAP reconciliation tables are included within the latest earnings release and earnings presentation.

Speaker 1

Both are available at investor. Kns.com along with prepared remarks for today's call. In addition to historical statements, today's remarks will contain statements relating to future events and our future results. These statements are forward looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 and are subject to risks and uncertainties that may cause our actual results and financial condition to differ materially from the statements made today. For a complete discussion of the risks associated with Juligan Sulfa that could affect our future results and financial condition, please refer to our recent and upcoming SEC filings, specifically the latest Form 10 ks as well as the 8 ks filed today.

Speaker 1

With that said, I will now turn the call over to Fusen Chen for the business overview. Please go ahead, Fusen.

Speaker 2

Thank you, Joe. Good afternoon, everyone. Although some of our core market remain in a state of digestion, we continue to anticipate a return to capacity growth in the core, both edge and the APS segments through our fiscal 2025 as we continue to expand shares through technology transitions in advanced packaging and the dispense. Yesterday, we made several positive announcements regarding a high potential foundry win. Our copper first hybrid bonding process, which we expect will reach 3 micron pitch and also an expansion of shareholders' return initiatives.

Speaker 2

Our leadership in Fraceless Thermal Compression, FTC, continue to grow. The collective effort by our advanced solution team and the execution across many parallel customer development program have allowed us to drive market adoption of this innovative process. This recent win represents significant milestone, which highlight the market potentials, our system level competitiveness and also the broader reach that chip bag and advanced packaging can have on high volume, more mature portion of semiconductor packaging. First, this milestone highlight that AFTC is a very competitive and a compelling industry solution, which is capable of directly supporting many different SEGDIVE applications, including the world's most advanced logic and the memory production. But also within our high volume logic market which are transitioning from the mature free chip process.

Speaker 2

We are very proud of our innovations within TCV technology and also our strong foundational base of leading customers which illustrate the current market need and the longer term potential of this competitive technology. Secondly, our current win and innovation highlight our leadership position in the technology transition. KNX is the first and the only provider of fluxless system which are proven in the production environment. Today we have a global TCV installed base of over 100 systems and are approaching $200,000,000 of cumulative TCV sales. Of this installed base, approximately service system are launching FTC in either a development or production environment across 5 major IDM, OSAT and the foundry customers.

Speaker 2

Maintaining this level of support across different emerging application and the customer location continue to be accomplished by our dedicated advanced solution team. Cross customer engagement have been essential in the development of our FTC platform Optula and provide the critical market insight which enable us to develop a very flexible and capable system architectures which can support a broad range of new packaging format. While there are many different marketing acronym used to expand the growing mix of advanced packaging offering such as on wafer, on substrate, on interposer, on IC. We have built a system which support a wide variety of material handling configuration and is very capable of supporting the most advanced PCB requirement whether chip to chip or chip to wafer. As a need for advanced fine pitch FTC and the copper hybrid growth, we expect our competitive position will continue to improve across high performance applications.

Speaker 2

Finally, these announcements serve as a reminder that the future of semiconductor assembly will require new and increasingly more complex assembly solution that can provide greater transistor density at the packaging level. This growing need extends way beyond the most advanced process node. Emerging packaging technology provide a new level of value increasingly necessary to offset the limitation of 2 dimensional no shrink. Today, our new product portfolio including vertical wire, HPI, FTC and the copper first provide capable solution well positioned to support packaging label transistor density across end market. We have been focusing extensively on this transition for years, are pleased with our recent progress and look forward to additional adoption.

Speaker 2

Turning to the 4th quarter's results, we delivered revenue of $181,300,000 and a non GAAP EPS of $0.34 From an end market standpoint, key portion of general semiconductor, automotive, industrial and the memory have improved as anticipated, while LED demand remain very soft. We continue to anticipate coordinate recovery of our 2 most significant end market, General Semiconductor and the automotive industrial through fiscal 2025. For the September quarter, general semiconductor reduced sequentially primarily due to strong quarter TCV revenue stemming from shipment schedules and the revenue recognition timeline, which create quarter to quarter variability. Excluding TCV, general semiconductor increased by 11% sequentially, driven by capacity digestion and the returning demand from global OSAT as anticipated. Although the December quarter trend to be seasonally suffer, averaging 10% sequential reduction over the prior 3 years.

Speaker 2

We are confident rather more volume demand will improve further through fiscal 2025 due to reasonable unit growth combined with higher fuel utilization rate. For automotive and the industrial, we are seeing demand improvement after a challenging year. As I explained last quarter, the demand improvement in general semiconductor driven by ball bonding were completely offset by the challenge within automotive and industrial during fiscal 2024. At this point, we believe both critical market are past trough and expect co ordinate recovery to accelerate in fiscal 2025. Despite this recent period of capacity digestion, we continue to participate in emerging transition, driven by secular growth in electronics, in electrical vehicle and the sustainability trends.

Speaker 2

We have a strong network of global customers who are critically enabling these transitions, which we continue to support. Over the past 4 years, many countries in addition to European Union have implement targets or policies to incentivize EV adoptions. Just last month, the International Energy Agency, IEA, reported 7,000,000 EV was sold globally in the first half of calendar twenty twenty four, representing a 25% year over year increase. While our core wedge SMT and the battery assembly solution are directly enabling this critical transition within the automotive market, We continue to seek our new solution which can expand our market access. During the recent September quarters, we recognized revenue for an advanced dispens system positioned to support a solid state EV battery manufacturer.

Speaker 2

This represents a new market for our advanced expense business, but also diversify our growing base of battery related opportunity in the U. S, Europe and Asia. We anticipate follow-up orders in the coming quarters to support these customers' production rate. OLED overall remains soft within more bonding and continue to be in a state of digestion across the traditional wire bonded high bright lighting market. While this current level of demand will likely persist over the coming quarters, we remain focused on driving adoption of our Luminess laser based mini LED placement systems, which is a position for a direct initiative and advanced big lighting adoption over the coming quarters.

Speaker 2

During the September quarters, we booked revenue for 1 Luminex system which is in less state development and the production readiness. We look forward to qualifying additional customers who will seek ultrafast LED placements through 2025. Lastly, we see ongoing strength related to both capacity addition and the technology change within the memory market. In addition to the improving capacity need for traditional stack NAND application, we are working with the key memory customers to leverage vertical wire application in next generation low power D band package as previously explained, but also within NAND application. Initial vertical wire LPDR solution leveraging a vertical fan out configuration are currently running at the 2 key memory customers, which we anticipate will move into low volume production environment next year.

Speaker 2

Like LPDDR, memory customers are also seeking new stack packaging format for NAND memory, which also utilize our unique set of vertical wire solution. Both approach offers smaller packaging footprint and the performance benefit related to an improved die L, low parasitic capacitance and also low parasitic resistance. This unique vertical wire solution are competing example of how new packaging format are mitigating no shrink challenges. We expect similar approach to extend beyond memory into higher volume general semiconductor applications over the coming years. We are pleased with our recent progress and the emerging position supporting advanced packaging application serving the compute market.

Speaker 2

This leading edge market is now being enabled by chiplet and heterogeneous packaging technique and was previously excluded from our self market despite our dominant ball and the wage bonding shares and has been a key target of our advanced solution strategy. We are proud to demonstrate our strength, progress and the potential with this long term advanced solution strategy, allow additional technology change, are providing opportunity in several other areas as well. While the current TCV win for foundry, IDM and the OSAT customers who are supporting leading edge applications, expanding our market potentials, we want to remind investors that leading edge applications are not the only opportunity for advanced packaging. Beside copper first hybrid and the FTC, our production ready assembly technique including vertical wire are providing new solution for memory and the high volume general semiconductor. Additionally, high power interconnect HPI is enhancing power semiconductor and the battery assembly approach.

Speaker 2

This all represent critical technology transition, which are enhancing the value of our respective assembly processes. We are well prepared for this transition and have multiple market ready solutions to support our extensive customer base. Consortium, participation, modeling, market engagement, key customer adoption and a comprehensive set of advanced packaging solution highlight our prepared business needs to address next set of industry challenges. After an extended period of capacity digestion, we also expect ongoing improvement and cyclical recovery across key end market, most notably general semiconductor, automotive and industrial. Looking into fiscal 2025, we remain optimistic due to the recent technology win, but also due to underlying market conditions.

Speaker 2

The relatively high global bond in the validation rate combined with a reasonable semiconductor unit growth is expected to trigger additional growth in our core market during fiscal 2025. In addition, the expectation of a broader automotive and industrial recovery are also supported with our results. Finally, broader macroeconomic improvement are also expected to stimulate global semiconductor unit growth through fiscal 2025. I will now turn the call over to Lester for the financial update. Lester?

Speaker 3

Thank you, Fusen. My remarks today will refer to GAAP results unless noted. As we anticipate a broader cyclical recovery for our ball and wedge businesses, we remain focused on supporting many different customer engagements and new technology requirements to expand market access further into fiscal 2025. We continue to execute our broad growth strategy intended to expand our market competencies and market share in support of emerging technology transistors. This too has been demonstrated in many different markets and applications over the years, including stack wire bonding, battery assembly, display and most notably, flexless thermal compression today.

Speaker 3

The success of this strategy relies on our technology strength, close customer collaboration and also our ability to hedge customer and project related risks where possible. Considering the extent of the Project W related charges booked during the March quarter of our fiscal 2024, we are pleased to announce we reached a customer agreement for reimbursement of a significant portion of our prior impairment charges. We intend to book the benefit within the current December quarter. Looking back at our September quarter results, we generated 181 $3,000,000 of revenue and a 48.3 percent gross margin, largely due to an improving mix of higher performance ball and wedge systems. Non GAAP operating expenses came in above our expectations due primary to foreign exchange and end of the year accrual adjustments.

Speaker 3

During the September quarter, we booked a net income tax benefit of $2,000,000 primarily due to a $6,500,000 tax benefit from a U. S. Tax Court case, which reduced our one time transition tax. Prior to today's call, we also announced several updates to our capital allocation programs. First, we received approval for our 5th consecutive dividend raise.

Speaker 3

We continue to appreciate the consistency and continuity of the dividend program, which allows us to provide our long term holders with a competitive dividend yield and income stream for their support. Secondly, we announced the authorization of a new repurchase program, which we anticipate will seamlessly transition as we complete the existing program. Finally, we want to remind investors, we have repurchased 10,300,000 shares over the prior 3 fiscal years and continue to maintain a consistent and fairly aggressive repurchase cadence. Over the long term, growing our market access through the organic and inorganic activities remain our priority, although we expect to further enhance long term EPS growth for investors by continuing our proven repurchase strategy. For the December quarter, we expect revenues of approximately $165,000,000 plus or minus $10,000,000 with gross margin of 47%.

Speaker 3

Non GAAP operating expenses are anticipated to be $70,500,000 plus or minus 2%. Collectively, we expect GAAP EPS of $1.45 per share and non GAAP EPS of $0.28 per share. This outlook include customer reimbursement associated with the March 11, 2024 cancellation of Project W. As Susan mentioned, we remain very focused on many different customer engagements and also very focused to drive market adoption of our growing portfolio of solutions. We look forward to announcing additional product successes as we prepare for the broader core market recovery in fiscal 2025.

Speaker 3

This concludes our prepared comments. Operator, please open the call for questions.

Operator

Thank you. The floor is now open for questions. Today's first question is coming from Krish Sankar of T. B. Cowen.

Operator

Please go ahead.

Speaker 4

Hi. Thanks so much for taking my questions. This is Steven calling on behalf of Krish. I guess the first one for Fusen. In terms of your general semiconductor end market, it's nice to see the sequential growth during the September quarter.

Speaker 4

But just kind of curious, like if we were to dig in a little bit further, in terms of the, I guess, utilization rates at your OSAT customers, I think last quarter you mentioned it would have it would be reaching the high 70% range during September quarter. Did it reach that or exceed that? And I'm just kind of curious like do you still think 80% utilization rates are still the right threshold to think about for when your customers will add capacity or is the more historic 90% utilization rates still the right sort of threshold?

Speaker 3

So Stephen, it's Lester. Let me answer the question on utilization. So I think for the September quarter, the utilization rate differs in different regions, right, as well as in different end markets. So for example, in China, utilization rate is over 80%, while for the rest of the world, it's probably in the mid-70s, but it is every last couple of quarters, it's been going up. So I think for general semi utilization rate is also going up.

Speaker 3

And I think 80% is sort of the threshold we've always said where people start doing more capacity wise.

Speaker 4

Okay, great. Thank you for that, Lester. And then just for my follow-up, in regards to the foundry customer win for the TCP Aptura tool, congratulations on that announcement. I'm just kind of curious like is that at a major time on foundry? And also can you give us a sense for the longer term or the opportunity for the Aptura sales next year and longer term for the time horizon for that?

Speaker 2

Okay. The recent win actually was a multiple system BO. This is for the near term production. Why we believe we actually have upside for the next year and the onward. Actually, we have not received a long term forecast, but we do believe this can be a significant for the futures.

Speaker 2

So we probably will give you more update early next year. But I think this has conclude our effort actually was successful to qualify our products. And we believe long term will be good. So short term, I think we probably will update you in next couple of quarters.

Speaker 4

And Susan, just a quick follow-up to that. For that FTC win, are you guys the sole supplier for that solution or are you sharing that business with another industry peer by chance?

Speaker 2

Well, I think at this moment, we are the one to receive it. We don't comment in future any possibility, but we are quite confident our capability and also confident the opportunity we have for the next couple of years or long term.

Speaker 4

Great. Thank you so much.

Operator

Thank you. The next question is coming from Tom Diffely of D. A. Davidson. Please go ahead.

Speaker 5

Yes. Good morning. Thanks for the question. Curious just on the general semi business, how much did that recover during your fiscal 2024? And then what are your projections for fiscal 2025?

Speaker 5

Maybe can you put it in context of where that market is kind of on a normal basis?

Speaker 2

General semiconductor, so are you talking about you'd like to know general semiconductor in FY 2025?

Speaker 5

Yes, just kind of where we are in the cycle. I mean, obviously, 2 years ago, it's a trough and then it came up a bit last year and then you'd call for

Speaker 2

growth looks

Speaker 5

like again this year.

Speaker 2

Okay. So maybe I can just overview to tell you how market forecast from industry are forecaster and also our view. So the Q1 actually we got 165. I think industry digestion looks like still take a little bit longer. But we do see our Q2 actually will be better than Q1.

Speaker 2

And industry forecast actually believe our next year unit growth will be about 7% to 8% and approximately about 14% in the revenue, like this from Glatner. And the growth in the semiconductor revenue driven by number 1 is AI, number 2 is automotive and a lot of people believe automotive maybe already positive 12. The third one maybe answer your question is general semi. And general semi I think in 2025 the growth will be in IoT and also AI edge devices, which is communication devices with AI like AI capable PC and the smartphone. So these few items, people believe it's going to be 14% for the semiconductor revenue.

Speaker 2

So from our point of view, we guided 165% and we do believe our Q2 will be better. And as your question to you, Lester, the current acceleration that I think average we look at about 77%, really not far away from 80%, which is 3 giga capacity addition. So talking about our products, talk about Bobounde first. Our Bovanda peak at about $1,000,000,000 in FY 2021. But as you mentioned, I think recovery, we do see recovery in the 2024 compared to 20 3%, but was wide up by actually the auto weakness, right?

Speaker 2

But our bond in 2021, 23 and 2024 actually is the only average $300,000,000 give and take. So we believe our bow bonger have a lot of room to go. So we do expect second half twenty twenty five normally is our strong second half. We expect pre COVID our bond loan rate loan in about 500 to 600. We do believe from a second half of 2025, we should learn into what is a number.

Speaker 2

So to make the story short that we believe our bond will be up more significantly in second half, mainly driven by China mature node capacity addition, right, these are 28 nanometer and above. China has allowed capacity coming up. And also Southeast Asia, particularly in Malaysia, a lot of some demand will come to Malaysia is for China plus 1 strategy. So more bounder we believe will be up and which bounder we discussed probably positive trough. We actually are quite optimistic to receive order in recent quarters and we believe our TCB and expense will also go up, right.

Speaker 2

So that's a give and take of our view and industrial forecast view of our FY 'twenty

Speaker 5

five. Yes. I appreciate the color. That's very helpful. And then as a follow-up last year, if you could just talk a little bit about the recovery from Project Debo you're getting in the first fiscal quarter here and how that compares to what the total charge off was?

Speaker 5

That would be helpful.

Speaker 3

Sure, sure. As you recall, in Q2, Project W was canceled by the customer and we took an impairment in Q2. So as we indicated in our remarks, I'm very pleased that we've reached an agreement with the customer for the customer to reimburse a significant part of our impairment charges as reimbursement for our costs. So and this reimbursement will be recognized in Q1 and it's already in our current GAAP and non GAAP guidance. So we provide in our earnings release, Tom, at the back, there's a table that shows our anticipated non GAAP items included in the outlook and there's a $75,000,000 item related to discontinued business claims and proceeds in that table, which is overwhelmingly related to Project W.

Speaker 5

Okay, great. Can you just remind us what the total impairment charge was in the 2nd

Speaker 3

quarter? 105. Great.

Speaker 5

Okay, very helpful. Thank you very much.

Operator

Thank you. The next question is coming from Dave Dooley of Steelhead Securities. Please go ahead.

Speaker 6

Thanks for taking my questions and congratulations on the nice TCB win. I was curious, you mentioned several applications I think in the press release, but as far as your initial read on the situation, do you think you're going to be is this win at the foundry going to be more for chip on wafer or the wafer on the substrate? I think the chip on the wafer is the kind of the higher value added step. So I was just kind of curious if you've gotten 1 or 2 of these steps?

Speaker 2

Yes. Actually to answer your question, Sean, this application is for a fluctuates qualification, but it's at the chip to wafer label. And this is most advanced probably chip to wafer application and use our flux list. And our flux list actually can quantify process where both are chip to substrate and chip to wafer. But for this case, I think start with chip to wafer to qualify fluxless, but I think there will be a numerous opportunity and a numerous project.

Speaker 7

Okay. And as far as

Speaker 6

will these be for mobile applications or do

Speaker 7

you think these are going

Speaker 6

to be for high performance compute AI applications?

Speaker 2

So I actually mentioned, I think this is probably the most advanced TCV process for the very high end products.

Speaker 7

Okay. And then I was curious, you've made several comments during your prepared remarks and

Speaker 6

in the press release about a coordinated recovery in the general semiconductor market. So obviously your utilization rates have improved. Have you started are the customers coming in and asking for slots or asking about availability for larger orders. What other signs are you seeing in the general semi business that gives you confidence that there's a recovery underway?

Speaker 3

Well, Dave, I mean, one you've mentioned one, right, utilization rates across the board in the high 70s in most end markets and then on a regional basis is over 80 already in China and it's again growing in the rest of the world. China has been strong actually over the last couple of quarters And we believe that now the rest of the world is starting to catch up. I think they're starting to for all the reasons that Fusen said, right, in terms of in China, there's a lot of fabs coming online, which will fit wafers, which obviously needs to be packaged. And again, wire bonding is still the cheapest way of interconnect. I think in addition, we also are seeing macro recovery a little bit in the economy.

Speaker 3

Obviously, there's still a little bit of volatility out there. So but all in all, I think we are seeing a lot more customer interest both inside and outside of China.

Speaker 7

Okay, great. And one more question for me is, you had a very robust gross margin in the quarter. I think

Speaker 6

it was just over 48%. And I was kind of curious, I've asked this question on previous conference calls, you've introduced a bunch of new products in the core wedge and wire bonder business that have higher margin profiles. I'm wondering as we move into next year, what can we expect for the gross margin profile for the wire and wedge bonder business? Thank you.

Speaker 3

Yes. So for the overall corporate margin, I mean, we are still aiming towards 50%, right? And then you're right, we have started introducing higher gross margin product in both our ball and wedge bonder businesses. And now they are getting qualified and I think they're becoming a high and high percentage of our overall ball and wedge sales. So I think as we move further into fiscal year 2025, I think the margin will start expanding.

Speaker 3

And also, as we've mentioned many times before, Fusen is very focused on cost reduction efforts, which is still ongoing.

Speaker 2

Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. The next question is coming from Mayur Pupri of B. Riley Securities. Please go ahead.

Speaker 7

Hi. Yes, I'm actually calling on behalf of Craig Ellis. And I wanted to ask about something that you said to Tom earlier, which is that you kind of expect stronger Q2 than Q1. That's sort of kind of been a theme across the board with the selling season. Are there any dynamics that you see that lead you to believe that Q1 might be somewhat depressed unusually?

Speaker 2

Well, Q1, normally most of the the weakest ones quarter probably is Q1. Normally I think seasonality happened in Q1 and the past 3 years is about 10% down. So this looks like a nice reset. Q2 actually we do have fewer customer actually because of our schedule reason I think already have slot over there. So we do believe Q2 will be better than Q1.

Speaker 2

That's the number we are seeing right now.

Speaker 7

Okay. Thank you. Yes, that makes a lot of sense. And then so another thing, obviously, audio industrial has been picking up for, I guess, 3 consecutive quarters now. Do you kind of expect that linearity to continue into the next year?

Speaker 7

And do you think that we've sort of seen the trough

Speaker 4

of the cycle and now we're entering into a more sustainable expansion?

Speaker 2

Well, I think that in the most in auto, there are 2 products, one is bow binder, one is a wedge bounder. So all we can tell you is that we have actually believe the wedge bounder is a recovering and so is a bow bonger. So in terms of the linearity, some of the witch bonger actually have big customer both in the U. S. And also in China, right, to customer.

Speaker 2

The pure comm actually can be big and so to achieve a linearity probably is not easy. But we do believe which bounder and the auto industry will be doing well for the 25.

Speaker 7

Okay, great. Thank you. And then just one last question. Congrats on the TCB plus wins. The way that I'm kind of thinking about it is that it might relate to these leading edge advanced packaging uses.

Speaker 7

Am I thinking about this the right way and what sort of end markets are carrying this order pickup?

Speaker 2

Well, the end market, I mentioned, I don't want to speak about customers' critical information, but we believe this is so critical. It's most appreciation and reliability is very important. And we'll be at this moment is actually can be for many multiple industry, right? It can be for autonomous in the future, it can be for high end high power computing. So we believe this is very typical application and once qualified this will run many, many years.

Speaker 7

Okay. Yeah, okay. That's all I have. Thank you so much.

Speaker 8

Thank you. Thanks.

Operator

Thank you. The next question is coming from Charles Hsieh of Needham. Please go ahead.

Speaker 8

Good evening, Fusen and Lester. Congrats on the TCB announcement. I do have a few follow-up on that. First, sounds like you are characterizing the order as a production order. Can you kind of confirm that?

Speaker 8

And the second, I do want to ask from the technical perspective. Can you kind of speak to why the customer is transitioning to TCB? Because everybody heard about that the story about the shrinking bump pitch, smaller bumps. But I do think maybe there is something there regarding the large die assembly that may require TCB. Can you kind of speak to that?

Speaker 8

And especially on the large side angle, is that is it a part of the reasons why your tools are getting adopted? Thanks.

Speaker 2

Okay. I think the qualification I mentioned is a follow-up Fluxless. So Fluxless, as you know, they are 2 technology. We actually believe we have a very strong direction. And actually, this is a sort of process, this is without sort of process.

Speaker 2

But anyway, you really got to go make a good contact without any upside, right? So we believe our process for the less is using actually localized delivery for me as this paper to clean the surface at the bonding stage. We believe this is the right approach. There's no wait time in situ clean and we do believe the surface, the bonding between a copper to copper is very, very good. And the other one actually is a user of plasma.

Speaker 2

So and of course, large die is always in our roadmap, right. And we believe we can handle very, very large die because right now, as you know, the die getting much bigger and the whole wafer maybe only couple of dies, right. So it's a critical one. So I just want to let you know we have a capability for a large die and we are very confident on our technology provided good leverage here and good years. That's the reason I think, yes, to answer your question, yes, this is for production.

Speaker 8

Got it. So the current order, is it mostly the you said there's 2 technologies, right, that the ones that you're seeing plasma, the other one sounds like it's a different technology, which one is shipping today?

Speaker 2

Okay. Of course, we are the one shipping and we use chemical clean is a forming essence.

Speaker 8

Got it. Thank you very much. Maybe the other question regarding high bandwidth memory, any progress you can update us on the TCB for that particular market?

Speaker 2

Sure. So actually we are quite excited. For memory, this is going to be our focus. So we have 2 paths focusing on memory. 1 is vertical wire.

Speaker 2

And as we mentioned, these are for the first one is going to follow low power DDR and customer indication preliminary low volume production will happen probably end of this year, I'm sorry, end of 2025. And with some vertical wire, fan our process, you actually can shrink about 35% of the form factor. So we are quite excited on that. Next one actually is HBM. So we actually quite use a lot of effort engaging our memory customers and to demonstrate our capability.

Speaker 2

So this is going to be our priority in FY 'twenty five. I think probably in another quarter or 2, we probably can give you update. But to tell you, I think we are quite confident in our technical superiority and we are going to put a good effort and we have a lot of work to study already and probably give you more update on next 1 or 2 quarters. All right. Thanks, Luci.

Speaker 2

Yes. Thank you very much, Charles.

Operator

Thank you. At this time, I'd like to turn the floor back over to Mr. Oginty for closing comments.

Speaker 1

Thank you, Donna, and thank you all for joining today's call. Over the coming quarter, we'll be presenting at several conferences and roadshows. As always, please feel free to follow-up directly with any additional questions. This concludes today's call. Have a great day, everyone.

Powered by Quartr
Earnings Conference Call
Kulicke and Soffa Industries Q4 2024
00:00 / 00:00