[Click eStock] "EO Technics, Forecast of Lower First Half and Higher Second Half This Year"

Sangsangin Securities analyzed on the 15th that IOTECHNICS will show a "sangjeohago" (low in the first half, high in the second half) trend this year. The investment opinion 'Buy' and the target price of 300,000 KRW were maintained.

Sangsangin Securities forecasted that IOTECHNICS' sales and operating profit in the second quarter will be 81.4 billion KRW and 9.2 billion KRW, respectively, down 6.3% and 24.9% year-on-year, falling short of market expectations. Jung Min-gyu, a researcher at Sangsangin Securities, said, "Sales of laser markers are recovering," but added, "Considering that the scale of global new line investments is smaller than expected, we are lowering the 2024 annual sales forecast by 11.2%."

However, Researcher Jung predicted that IOTECHNICS will show a sangjeohago trend this year and grow further next year. He emphasized, "As the high-bandwidth memory (HBM) market continues high growth, demand for IOTECHNICS' dicing equipment is also steadily increasing. Furthermore, there is ongoing discussion about the possibility of expanding HBM applications beyond servers and data centers to AI-device applications, which raises expectations for IOTECHNICS' mid- to long-term growth."

He added, "The quarterly profit growth trend is expected to continue due to the operating leverage effect from sales expansion and cost reduction from in-house production of core components such as lasers."