By Lisa Wang / Staff reporter
E&R Engineering Corp (鈦昇), a supplier of laser cutting and plasma cleaning equipment used in chip production, yesterday said revenue this year would grow at least 20 percent, benefiting from strong demand from customers in China and North America. The Kaohsiung-based company is one of few local companies capable of providing laser marking, cutting and drilling equipment, and plasma cleaning, etching and besmearing equipment utilized in advanced chip manufacturing or chip packaging processes. “This year, China is showing extraordinarily strong demand mostly for equipment used in chip packaging processes. Such demand would boost business in China twofold this year,” E&R Engineering spokesman Allen Lin (林傑倫) told investors in Taipei yesterday.
E&R Engineering Corp spokesman Allen Lin speaks at an investor conference in Taipei yesterday.
The company reported NT$1.81 billion (US$56.3 million) in revenue last year. “We are forecasting a conservative 20 percent increase in revenue compared with last year,” Lin said.
Revenue in the second quarter jumped 46.41 percent year-on-year to NT$1.01 billion, due to strong demand for the company’s equipment for advanced chip-on-wafer-on-substrate packaging technology, E&R Engineering said. The company said it aims for even higher growth in the next two to three years, as it plays an essential role in the semiconductor industry’s major platform shift from traditional organic substrates to glass core substrates in advanced chip packaging. The company provides laser cutting, drilling and other laser-based equipment used in the new glass-based chip packaging processes mainly for artificial intelligence (AI) chips. It said it is two to five years ahead of its local competitors in providing such equipment. Feedback from customers has indicated that they are accelerating commercialization of glass core substrates and plan to install glass-related equipment in the second half of next year for pilot run, Lin said. With final product qualification under way, E&R Engineering expects customers to start purchasing by the end of the year, and the equipment shipment volume is to increase significantly in the second quarter of next year, he said. In addition, the company is also developing advanced laser systems for co-packaged optics (CPO), a heterogeneous architecture that combines optics and silicon onto a single substrate to address next-generation bandwidth and power challenges, Lin said. E&R Engineering aims to provide laser equipment used in next-generation CPO devices with faster data transmission speed of 1.6 terabits to 3.2 terabits per second, he said. The company counts ASE Technology Holding Co (日月光投控), Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (台積電), Intel Corp and Chinese semiconductor companies among its major customers.
