News: Suppliers
10 April 2024
Aehr quarterly revenue halves due to short-term SiC-related order push-outs following EV market slowdown
For its fiscal third-quarter 2024 (to end-February), semiconductor production test and reliability qualification equipment supplier Aehr Test Systems of Fremont, CA, USA has reported revenue of $7.56m, more than halving from $17.2m a year ago and $21.4m last quarter. The drop reflects delays in wafer-level burn-in system orders for silicon carbide (SiC) devices used in electric vehicles that have created a short-term gap in revenue and profitability.
GAAP net loss was $1.47m ($0.05 per diluted share), compared with net income of $4.15m ($0.14 per diluted share) a year ago and $6.1m ($0.20 per diluted share) last quarter. However, this was slightly better than the guidance of a net loss of $1.5–1.8m ($0.05–0.06 per diluted share) given on 25 March.
During the quarter, cash and cash equivalents fell from $50.5m to $47.6m.
For fiscal fourth-quarter 2024 (to end-May), Aehr expects revenue to rebound, more than doubling quarter-to-quarter to at least $15.4m. Hence full-year fiscal 2024 revenue should be at least $65m (near or above record annual revenue), albeit down from the revised guidance of $75–85m given in early January and the initial guidance of over $100m given in mid-July 2023, before the order push-outs seen since late calendar 2023. The firm expects GAAP net income of $11m ($0.38 per diluted share), down from the initial guidance of $28m.
Order bookings for fiscal Q3/2024 were $24.5m, rebounding from just $2.2m last quarter (albeit still down on $33m a year ago). Order backlog has hence recovered from just $3m to $20m at the end of the quarter (still down on $31. 6m a year ago).
“Last week we announced an initial order for our FOX-NP solution from a new customer that is a multi-billion-dollar per year global semiconductor company, and is entering the silicon carbide market to address several applications that include automotive, industrial and electrification infrastructure. This is our third straight new customer for silicon carbide that is primarily focused on applications other than electric vehicles, expanding our opportunity within silicon carbide beyond electric vehicles,” says president & CEO Gayn Erickson.
“We are still in continued engagements up to and including on-wafer evaluations with well over a dozen silicon carbide suppliers that are focusing on both electric vehicles and other applications and are forecasting production needs for wafer-level test & burn-in of their devices with decision timelines that spread out over the next year. We are focused on the qualification process with as many new customers as possible, as once we have demonstrated our FOX wafer-level test & burn-in solution using their own wafers, we have not yet lost a potential customer,” he adds.
“Our discussions with customers indicate that the key markets Aehr is addressing for semiconductor wafer-level test & burn-in have significant growth opportunities that will expand this year and throughout this decade, and we are seeing increased customer engagement in each of these markets. We have also seen a recent strengthening in the silicon carbide market for electric vehicles outside the US in what appears to be a shift in the market share of electric vehicle suppliers. This includes Asia where we recently had extensive and very productive and positive visits with a significant number of silicon carbide suppliers and electric vehicle suppliers,” Erickson continues.
“According to many market forecasts, including the Semiconductor Industry Association, the semiconductor industry is expected to grow from $600m in 2022 to over $1 trillion at or around 2030. This acceleration is coming from mega-market drivers including artificial intelligence (AI), green energy and decarbonization, and IoT-based digital transformation. Increased reliability concerns about semiconductors, a growing number of mission-critical applications, and more multi-chip modules or heterogeneous integration with multiple devices being assembled in a single package are driving the need for wafer-level burn-in. At semiconductor industry conferences around the world, we are seeing an increased focus on test & burn-in moving to wafer level before these devices are put into multi-chip packages and modules.”
These favorable macro trends are driving the business that drives Aehr Test and include:
- silicon carbide power devices going into high-density modules for power conversion in electric vehicles;
- gallium nitride power semiconductors going into automotive, solar, and other mission-critical industrial applications;
- silicon photonics integrated circuits being put into transceivers for data-center infrastructure and optical chip-to-chip communication of CPU, GPU, and AI processors;
- memory devices for solid-state disk drives used in enterprise and data storage or for AI processors.
“Our continued investments in the FOX platform like the new 3.5kW per wafer FOX-XP multi-wafer production system we began shipping last month also position us well to address the requirements of other new market segments that we believe we will be able to discuss over the next several months,” says Erickson.
“As we head toward fiscal 2025, we are encouraged by our increasing engagements with current and potential customers and the long-term growth opportunities of all these markets,” concludes Erickson.
Aehr receives order from new customer for FOX-NP multi-wafer test & burn-in system
Aehr receives $23m in new follow-on orders
Aehr wins first order for FOX-NP wafer-level test & burn-in system for GaN
Aehr almost doubles revenue year-on-year
