News: Suppliers
29 July 2024
Aehr’s quarterly revenue rebounds from dip, enabling full-year growth
For its fiscal fourth-quarter 2024 (to end-May), semiconductor production test and reliability qualification equipment supplier Aehr Test Systems of Fremont, CA, USA has reported revenue of $16.6m, down on $22.3m a year ago but more than doubling from $7.56m last quarter, and exceeding the expected $15.4m.
Full-year revenue still grew from fiscal 2023’s $65m to a record $66.2m for fiscal 2024, exceeding the revised guidance of $65m (albeit still below 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 for silicon carbide device applications seen since late calendar 2023 due to slower electric vehicle demand).
On a non-GAAP basis, quarterly net income was $24.7m ($0.84 per diluted share), up from $6.8m ($0.23 per diluted share) a year ago and compared with a net loss of $0.88m ($0.03 per diluted share) last quarter. Full-year net income was hence $35.8m ($1.21 per diluted share) for fiscal 2024, more than doubling from fiscal 2023’s $17.3m ($0.59 per diluted share).
During the quarter, total cash and cash equivalents rose from $47.6m to $49.2m.
Order bookings were just $4m for the quarter, dropping back from a spike to $24.5m last quarter. Order backlog hence fell back from $20m to $7.3m. However, effective backlog (including orders received since the end of fiscal Q4) is $20.8m.
“Wafer-level test and burn-in of silicon carbide power semiconductors used in EVs was a key driver of our business in the last year, and we anticipate silicon carbide will continue to be a key contributor to revenue in the current fiscal year and beyond,” says president & CEO Gayn Erickson. Indeed, since the end of the quarter, on 16 July Aehr announced that it had received $12.7m in orders from one of its silicon carbide test and burn-in customers for FOX WaferPak full-wafer Contactors to support production of silicon carbide power devices for electric vehicles to be delivered over the next three months.
“The silicon carbide market continues to be an enormous opportunity for Aehr as we see more auto suppliers committed to silicon carbide in their EVs, as well as roadmaps that are based on modules for their electric motor power inverters. By 2030, battery EVs are forecasted to more than triple last year's sales to 30 million, or 30% of total vehicles manufactured worldwide,” he adds.
“We remain actively engaged with a significant number of new silicon carbide device and module suppliers and seek to meet their anticipated capacity coming online beginning in 2025. We are also seeing growing demand for silicon carbide devices beyond the EV market, such as solar, data center, and other industrial applications for power conversion. We believe we are well positioned to continue to grow our business in silicon carbide, and we expect to receive first orders from a significant number of additional silicon carbide customers by the end of this fiscal year,” Erickson says.
“We are also seeing traction with several emerging opportunities for our test and burn-in solutions in new target markets and expect bookings and revenue across a much broader range of customers and markets this fiscal year,” he adds.
“One of the key new market opportunities we are focusing on is the growing demand for artificial intelligence (AI) processor test and burn-in at both the wafer level and the packaged-part level. We are currently working with an AI accelerator company and have secured a commitment from them to evaluate our FOX solution for use in production wafer-level burn-in of their high-power processors. Upon successful demonstration of wafer-level test results and throughput, we expect they will utilize our new high-power FOX-XP systems for production of their next-generation AI processors, starting this fiscal year,” says Erickson.
Aehr has also announced its acquisition of Fremont-based Incal Technology Inc, a manufacturer of packaged-part reliability test and burn-in solutions for a wide range of semiconductor devices and markets, with a new product family of ultra-high-power test solutions for AI accelerators, graphics & network processors, and high-performance computing processors. “Between wafer-level and package-part, the reliability test and production burn-in market for AI processors exceeds $100m annually and, with this combined product portfolio, we believe we have the opportunity to capture a meaningful share of the market this fiscal year,” says Erickson.
In the year, Aehr announced its first order for a FOX wafer-level test and burn-in system for gallium nitride (GaN) devices. “While silicon carbide will be the semiconductor material of choice for EV traction inverters, GaN is expected to gain significant penetration in the on-board charging market as well as other automotive, solar and data-center power conversion applications,” notes Erickson. “We are working with several of the GaN market leaders, and received a significant number of WaferPak orders throughout the year for gallium nitride reliability test and qualification. We have now received our first forecasts for wafer-level production burn-in systems to be delivered during this fiscal year. We continue to be encouraged by this market and believe it will be significant in market size for semiconductors and has the potential to be a solid market opportunity for Aehr’s solutions.”
“Within the silicon photonics market, we shipped the first order from a major silicon photonics customer for the new high-power configuration of our FOX-XP system this last fiscal year. This new configuration expands our market opportunity by enabling cost-effective volume-production test of wafers of next-generation photonic ICs that are targeted for use in the new optical I/O or co-packaged optics market,” says Erickson. “Nvidia, AMD and Intel have all discussed the potential for adding optical chip-to-chip communication for performance improvement and power savings for AI processors and high-performance computing chips.”
“Looking ahead, we believe Aehr has significant opportunities for growth in fiscal 2025 and beyond,” concludes Erickson. For fiscal 2025 (to end-May), Aehr expects revenue to grow to a new record of at least $70m, and net profit before taxes of at least 10% of revenue.
Aehr receives order from new customer for FOX-NP multi-wafer test & burn-in system
