The revenue sources of semiconductor equipment manufacturers are concentrated in wafer foundries.

3/9/2023 11:26:58 AM

Semiconductor equipment manufacturers such as KLA-Tencor, Novellus Systems and Teradyne have recently announced their latest quarterly financial results, and their sales performance has declined as expected, and they also estimate that their performance will decline even more in the next quarter; The revenue sources of these manufacturers are concentrated on the investment of wafer foundries in 32 nm and 28 nm process nodes.

At the same time, EDA supplier Cadence Design Systems' third-quarter financial results are bright, and the company said that its fourth-quarter performance will grow again. However, Cadence's abnormal growth performance in the semiconductor industry in recent days may be partly due to accounting calculation methods and licensing contracts. These factors usually make EDA companies' performance more stable than other semiconductor companies and capital equipment suppliers.

KLA-Tencor's revenue in the third quarter of 2011 ended September 30th was USD 796 million, which was 11% lower than the previous quarter, but increased by 17% compared with the same period last year. However, according to Yahoo Finance, the company's third-quarter performance was higher than the analyst's estimate of $792 million. Rich Wallace, president and CEO of KLA-Tencor, said that due to the persistent global economic weakness and the normal cycle of the semiconductor industry, customers reduced their orders or delayed their capacity expansion plans. The company estimated that the new orders in this quarter decreased by 43% compared with last quarter, amounting to 486 million US dollars.

Wallace said that KLA has seen the strong demand of customers for 28 nm process equipment, and chip manufacturers are currently making relevant investments to overcome the yield challenge of this node; And KLA also actively responds to the demand for advanced process node equipment from many wafer foundries. Wallace said that orders from wafer foundries accounted for 57% of KLA's new orders in the third quarter. The company expects that the demand from wafer foundries will continue into the fourth quarter, mainly in response to the mass production of 28 nm process.

KLA expects the company's fourth-quarter performance to decrease by 18-25% to reach $650 million. However, orders in this season can increase by 25%~45%. KLA also expects revenue growth to resume in the first quarter of 2012. KLA's fourth-quarter earnings forecast is different from the analyst's estimate of $710 million; Wallace said that the company is hopeful that memory suppliers will increase capacity investment in the short term: "We do see the hope of the memory industry, but we haven't seen much action yet; At this juncture, manufacturers talk more about investment than they do. "

Christopher Muse, an analyst at Barclays Capital, a market research organization, said that he and his colleagues were surprised by the increase in capital expenditure of wafer foundries. However, he also added that he is optimistic about the investment opportunities of 28 nm and 32 nm technologies from wafer foundries, which will be a highlight of the industrial recession.

Novellus, another semiconductor equipment manufacturer, reported a financial report of US$ 306.7 million in the new quarter ending September 24th, down 12% from the previous quarter and 17% from the same period last year. The company's order amount in the third quarter decreased to $226.9 million, down 27% from the previous quarter; Shipments in the quarter were $301.6 million, a decrease of 16.1% compared with the second quarter. Richard Hill, chairman and CEO of Novellus, said that the turmoil in the global market has also affected the investment of capital-intensive manufacturers, but the company is still optimistic about the basic demand for technology products in the market, which will enable the company to ride out the depression.

Teradyne, a supplier of automatic test equipment (ATE), achieved a third-quarter performance of $344 million, down 30% from the previous quarter and 30% from the same period last year. The company's orders in the third quarter amounted to $240 million, including $196 million from the semiconductor testing department and $44 million from the system testing business department.

Mike Bradley, President and CEO of Teradyne, said: "The revenue of semiconductor test orders and related businesses has weakened with the industry trend this season, but we still see relatively strong growth from the mobile device market driven by power management chips, image sensor chips and mobile phone processors." The company expects the fourth quarter performance to decline again, reaching $270-300 million, which is roughly in line with analysts' estimates.

Cadence, an EDA supplier, reported a third-quarter performance of $292 million, an increase of 23% over the same period of last year and higher than the analyst's estimate of $285 million. However, the revenue recognized by Cadence and other EDA suppliers is based on the contract period, not the sales during that period; Therefore, the revenue performance cycle of EDA manufacturers is usually several months later than that of other semiconductor manufacturers.

Lip-Bu Tan, President and CEO of Cadence, said, "Hot-line design activities from multiple markets continue to drive the demand for our products and solutions. The company expects the fourth quarter results to grow to 295 million to 305 million US dollars; As for the whole year of 2011, the total revenue is estimated to be between $1.135 billion and $1.145 billion.

Tags: The revenue sources of semiconductor equipment manufacturers are concentrated in wafer foundries.

Prve：No Datas

Next：Electronics industry: semiconductor industry is facing the winter.