Development of HBM Package Test Equipment
Expected Full-Scale Adoption Due to Customer Cost Savings
Stock Price Soars with Sharp Increase in Operating Profit Forecast This Year
Techwing's market capitalization surpassed 1 trillion KRW for the first time in history. The stock price has steadily trended upward over the past year. Since the announcement of ChatGPT, demand for artificial intelligence (AI) semiconductors has surged. As the process of increasing AI semiconductor processing speed involves more testing volumes, expectations for improved performance of semiconductor inspection equipment companies have grown.
According to the financial investment industry on the 14th, Techwing's stock price has risen 146% this year up to the previous day. Compared to one year ago, it increased by 397%. The market capitalization recorded 1.052 trillion KRW. During the previous day's trading session, the stock price reached 29,000 KRW at one point, setting a new all-time high.
Techwing is a semiconductor handler company. Its main product, the memory test handler, plays a role in transporting and sorting chips and creating test temperature environments during the testing process. It supplies equipment to SK Hynix, Micron, Intel, and others. Last year, profits sharply declined due to the sluggish semiconductor market conditions. Last year's sales amounted to 133.6 billion KRW, shrinking to about half compared to the previous year. Operating profit dropped 94% year-on-year to 3.4 billion KRW, and net loss turned to 11.3 billion KRW. Looking at the fourth-quarter performance alone, the bottom has been reached. Sales were 41.2 billion KRW, and operating profit was 3.3 billion KRW, showing improvement compared to the previous quarter.
The stock price steadily rose despite poor performance. This was due to expectations for new equipment. This year, mass production will begin for wafer test probe stations and cube probers for high-bandwidth memory (HBM) testing. The probe station is currently undergoing quality testing with domestic customers. Once testing is completed in the first half of this year, sales are expected to begin in the second half.
The cube prober is equipment that combines a handler and a prober. Existing HBM wafer test equipment conducted wafer-level tests before cutting and sample tests after cutting. By introducing the cube prober, it is expected to improve HBM yield through full inspection after cutting.
Hyundai Motor Securities estimated that Techwing will achieve sales of 281.3 billion KRW and operating profit of 60.6 billion KRW this year, representing increases of 111% and 1679%, respectively, compared to last year. Junyoung Park, a researcher at Hyundai Motor Securities, said, "We expect sales of the cube prober for HBM to begin in the fourth quarter of this year," and analyzed, "The maximum sales scale of the cube prober will reach at least 750 billion KRW."
The related industry expects that HBM yield will increase when adopting Techwing's equipment. Previously, only sample tests were conducted, and customers supplied HBM to TSMC. When only sample inspections are conducted, defective products may be mixed and passed on to TSMC, and if TSMC finds HBM defects, the manufacturer must bear the cost. Techwing's equipment filters out defective products through full inspection, thereby reducing HBM manufacturing costs.
Sojung Lee, a researcher at Sangsangin Securities, explained, "Techwing's cube prober equipment can theoretically inspect four times more HBM dies simultaneously compared to competitors' equipment," and added, "By equipping the cube prober with an ultra-low temperature chiller, related sales are expected to increase together."
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