News: Suppliers
2 February 2023
Riber’s full-year revenue falls 11% to €27.8m, constrained by electronic component sourcing
For fourth-quarter 2022, Riber S.A. of Bezons, France – which manufactures molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) systems as well as evaporation sources – has reported revenue of €15.6m, up by 2% on €15.4m a year ago.
Full-year 2022 revenue was €27.8m (23% from Europe, 72% from Asia, and 5% from North America). This is down 11% on 2021’s €31.2m after being strongly impacted by difficulties sourcing electronic components.
MBE systems revenue was €14.8m (comprising six systems delivered, including four production units), down 15% on 2021’s €17.4m (comprising eight systems delivered, including four production units). Despite efforts to resolve the supply chain disruption affecting electronic components, the delivery of two research systems (representing an amount of €2.9m) had to be deferred to 2023.
Services & Accessories revenue was €13m, down 6% from 2021’s record €13.8m, primarily reflecting the deferral to 2023 of the delivery of a major accessories order due to supply tensions and delays.
Orders more than double
The order book more than doubled, rising by 102% from €14. 8m at end-2021 to €29.9m at end-2022.
Specifically, orders for MBE systems grew by 212% from just €7.9m to a record €24.6m (comprising 11 systems). Also, this does not include the option to buy (announced on 8 June 2022) covering four production systems for which firm orders will be confirmed in 2023 when the export license is obtained.
Riber says that orders for Services & Accessories are temporarily down at end-2022, to €5.3m, down by 23% from €6.9m at end-2021.
Outlook
Factoring in the deferral of two system deliveries to 2023 and the increase in the order book, Riber is forecasting that full-year revenue will grow by at least 35% to about €40m in 2023.
“With very buoyant market trends and a strong prospect pipeline, the order intake levels are expected to remain robust in 2023,” says Riber.
Christian Dupont appointed as vice-chairman of Executive Board
Riber’s Supervisory Board met on 25 January, chaired by Ms Annie Geoffroy. As proposed by the Appointments and Compensation Committee, it appointed Christian Dupont as a member and vice-chairman of the Executive Board from 6 February.
Picture: Christian Dupont, new vice-chairman of Riber’s Executive Board.
The appointment is in line with the expansion of the Executive Board to three members. Due to his extensive experience of the microelectronics industry and its players, Dupont’s mission will be in particular to further strengthen Riber’s commercial development and marketing. “His strong people skills and his interest in high-tech entrepreneurial development represent strong assets to support Riber with a new expansion phase,” reckons the firm.
After graduating as an engineer from EPFL (École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne), Dupont began his career in 1988 with Texas Instruments, where in 1992 he helped to create its Wireless business unit, which became the wireless semiconductor market leader for 15 years. He was a marketing manager before being appointed to head up the business unit in Dallas and Nice, where he was in charge of the wireless business unit in Europe. From 2007 to 2010, he was CEO of the electro-optics startup Varioptic, which was sold to Parrot, before serving until 2015 as CEO of MEMS auto-focus firm PoLight in Norway, which listed on Oslo’s stock market.
From 2015 to 2021, he was chairman & CEO of CEO-CF, the leading collaboration platform for executives from high-growth European technology companies. In 2018, he helped to restructure and refinance semiconductor firm Dolphin Integration as its CEO. From 2019, he was CEO of digital health firm Digitsole.
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