Semiconductor equipment supplier Acter Group Co (聖暉) yesterday said it has secured record-high orders amounting to NT$31 billion, up 2 percent from last year, benefiting from an investment spree on new chip manufacturing facilities in China and Southeast Asia.
As Beijing aims to push for a chip self-sufficiency rate of 70 percent next year, Chinese chipmakers are showing strong ambition to build more facilities this year, Acter said.
About 30 new fabs, mostly less advanced, would be under construction by the second half of this year, it said.
Photo: Bloomberg
“We have received more orders than we had anticipated. China continues to show strong demand,” Acter president Lai Ming-kun (賴銘崑) told an investors’ conference in Taipei. “Most Chinese fabs are to make chips on 16-nanometer technologies and other mature process technologies, as advanced equipment and materials are banned from being exported to China due to the US-China trade dispute.”
Southeast Asia would be another region with strong growth this year as Taiwanese electronics companies and chip packaging service providers are allocating production to Malaysia, Vietnam, Thailand and Indonesia to minimize risks of geopolitical tensions, Lai said.
Rapid demand in the region is the main reason behind the company’s optimism about this year’s revenue growth, the company said.
Customers plan to produce servers, printed circuit boards and other electronic components at new factories.
Three months ago, the clean room equipment supplier was neutral about this year’s outlook, it said.
Acter expects revenue this year to return to growth, after dipping 11 percent year-on-year to NT$25 billion (US$785.4 million) last year.
China was the biggest revenue contributor last year with a 49 percent share, followed by Taiwan at 42 percent and Southeast Asia at 9 percent, it said.
Acter is also looking at new business opportunities in Japan and India, Lai said.
Acter counts the world’s major foundry companies, including Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (台積電), United Microelectronics Corp (聯電) and Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (中芯), among its customers.
Nova Technology Corp (朋億), an equipment manufacturing subsidiary of Acter, would have greater exposure to Japan this year, the company said.
Nova specializes in supplying high-purity chemical supply and dispensing systems, special gas supply systems and high-level wet-process equipment for cleaning.
The company is considering setting up a Japanese unit as two of its main customers are mulling building new plants there, it said.
The firm has secured record-high orders of NT$11 billion, with about 70 percent coming from Chinese customers and 20 percent from Taiwan, it said.
Nova expects revenue this year to reach NT$10 billion, up 9.4 percent from NT$9.14 billion last year.
TECH BOOST: New TSMC wafer fabs in Arizona are to dramatically improve US advanced chip production, a report by market research firm TrendForce said With Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) pouring large funds into Arizona, the US is expected to see an improvement in its status to become the second-largest maker of advanced semiconductors in 2027, Taipei-based market researcher TrendForce Corp (集邦科技) said in a report last week. TrendForce estimates the US would account for a 21 percent share in the global advanced integrated circuit (IC) production market by 2027, sharply up from the current 9 percent, as TSMC is investing US$65 billion to build three wafer fabs in Arizona, the report said. TrendForce defined the advanced chipmaking processes as the 7-nanometer process or more
China’s Huawei Technologies Co (華為) plans to start mass-producing its most advanced artificial intelligence (AI) chip in the first quarter of next year, even as it struggles to make enough chips due to US restrictions, two people familiar with the matter said. The telecoms conglomerate has sent samples of the Ascend 910C — its newest chip, meant to rival those made by US chipmaker Nvidia Corp — to some technology firms and started taking orders, the sources told Reuters. The 910C is being made by top Chinese contract chipmaker Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC, 中芯) on its N+2 process, but a lack
NVIDIA PLATFORM: Hon Hai’s Mexican facility is to begin production early next year and a Taiwan site is to enter production next month, Nvidia wrote on its blog Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), the world’s biggest electronics manufacturer, yesterday said it is expanding production capacity of artificial intelligence (AI) servers based on Nvidia Corp’s Blackwell chips in Taiwan, the US and Mexico to cope with rising demand. Hon Hai’s new AI-enabled factories are to use Nvidia’s Omnivores platform to create 3D digital twins to plan and simulate automated production lines at a factory in Hsinchu, the company said in a statement. Nvidia’s Omnivores platform is for developing industrial AI simulation applications and helps bring facilities online faster. Hon Hai’s Mexican facility is to begin production early next year and the
Who would not want a social media audience that grows without new content? During the three years she paused production of her short do-it-yourself (DIY) farmer’s lifestyle videos, Chinese vlogger Li Ziqi (李子柒), 34, has seen her YouTube subscribers increase to 20.2 million from about 14 million. While YouTube is banned in China, her fan base there — although not the size of YouTube’s MrBeast, who has 330 million subscribers — is close to 100 million across the country’s social media platforms Douyin (抖音), Sina Weibo (新浪微博) and Xiaohongshu (小紅書). When Li finally released new videos last week — ending what has
RSS