By Lisa Wang / Staff reporter
Chunghwa Leading Photonics Tech Co (CLPT, 中華立鼎) expects revenue this year to grow about 30 percent annually on rising demand for optical inspection used in advanced chip packaging, the image sensor manufacturer said yesterday.The artificial intelligence (AI) boom “is driving demand for chip testing and packaging services, as well as demand for related inspection tools,” CLPT president Lin Chia-chien (林嘉堅) told an event in Taipei.“We have secured orders to supply linear sensors used in semiconductor inspection tools. Shipments are to ramp up in the second half of this year,” he said.
Chunghwa Leading Photonics Tech Co chairman Tu Yuan-kuang, third right, president Lin Chia-chien, third left, and other company executives pose for a photograph at an event in Taipei yesterday.
In addition, skyrocketing demand for AI computing has accelerated data center inspection needs to avoid hardware failure risks amid mounting workloads, Lin said.That is driving demand for photodiodes used in laser optical power meters, he said.
The company, 62 percent owned by Chunghwa Telecom Co (中華電信), focuses on making short-wavelength infrared (SWIR) image sensors that take in light from the SWIR band.SWIR-band light can penetrate silicon wafers to locate positioning marks or chck for internal defects, and it can also penetrate opaque resin material to capture the content of a package, the company said.The Global SWIR market is expected to post annual growth of 12.5 percent to US$2.3 billion in 2035, from US$788 million last year, as industrial automation and copackaged optics increasingly gain traction, a Global Market Insights forecast said.With robust demand for AI-related inspection tools, the company expects linear sensors and photodiodes to make up more than 10 percent each of its total revenue in the second half of this year, the company said.Its largest revenue contributor comes from area sensors, it said.The company’s revenue increased 29.8 percent year-on-year last year to NT$257 million (US$8.12 million), and it aims to maintain similar growth this year and keep its gross margin at between 60 percent and 70 percent, CLPT chairman Tu Yuan-kuang (涂元光) said.Earnings per share rose to NT$6.7 last year from NT$6.41 in 2024, company data showed.Benefiting from AI-related demand, the company has maintained an average of three or four months order visibility since last year, compared with one to two months in the past, Lin said, adding that coupled with increasing rush orders, the company sees “steady and healthy” customer demand.The company is to debut its shares on the Emerging Stock Board on Wednesday next week at NT$120 per share.
