WinWay says sales to hit record high

WinWay Technology Co (穎崴), a supplier of integrated circuit testing interface and coaxial sockets, yesterday said revenue would expand by a double-digit percentage this year to a record high due to demand for artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing (HPC) chips.Advanced chips, including AI, HPC, graphics processing units, central processing units and smartphone chips, made up 89 percent of WinWay’s revenue, company data showed.However, increasingly complex chip architecture has caused hardware supply bottlenecks and lengthened chip testing time, it said.To meet rising demand and ease capacity constraints, the company is accelerating expansion this year with a new factory in Kaohsiung scheduled to begin construction on Friday, WinWay said.The firm is also outsourcing capacity to local partners to maximize capacity availability, it said. WinWay usually farms out 30 percent of its production to partners.“Taiwan’s semiconductor supply chain, from raw material suppliers, foundry companies to chip testing and packaging companies, is undergoing hectic days,” company chairman Mark Wang (王嘉煌) told a media gathering in Taipei. “They are all gearing up for capacity expansion. WinWay is no exception.”“Since WinWay’s inception in 2001, we have never seen customers reserving capacity half a year ahead,” Wang said. “Now we are seeing order backlogs stretching to five to six months due to capacity constraints.”The company’s revenue growth has been capped by capacity scarcity, but with new capacity coming online later this year, WinWay’s revenue this year is likely to hit the highest level in the company’s history, he said.WinWay expects its probe pin capacity to jump 50 percent to 9 million units per month in the second half of this year, from 6 million units in the first half, Wang said.The monthly capacity would surge to 14 million units next year after the new factory starts operations in the second quarter of next year, he added.The company’s revenue grew 34 percent year-on-year to NT$3.97 billion (US$126.23 million) in the first four months of this year, with coaxial socket services contributing the most, accounting for 46 percent of the total, while probe card services made up about 15 percent, company data showed.Probe cards are the critical electrical interface in semiconductor manufacturing to test silicon wafers before they are packaged. Probe pins are microscopic conductive contact points attached to the probe card that touch the microchips to route test signals between wafers and testing equipment.More than 80 percent of the firm’s revenue this year to last month came from North America, the company said.