Kulicke and Soffa Industries, Inc. (NASDAQ:KLIC) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

David Duley: Thanks for taking my questions. I guess first of all, you talked a lot about the thermal compression bonding opportunity. I was wondering if you could just elaborate a little bit more on what you think the size of that market is in dollars on an annual basis and what your market share is? And then your competitor, I think on one, on their conference call was making a big deal about working with AMD or logic provider. Could you talk about who your key customers are, what in markets your efforts are in?

Fusen Chen: Okay. So I think TCB in the recent, just recently, I think the prospect actually increased a lot. Part of that, I think also people transfer advance free chip to advance some compression. So I think in my previous call, we mentioned we have backlog of $80 million. So of course we ship to our customer. In the meantime, we also get the new PO. But our PO I think we have requirement is not only order, we’ve got to have a specific delivery time. So sometimes I think, backlog is not the best judgment. We actually conduct a study after we visit a lot of customers, from design house or foundry and many, many customers. We feel like actually this is a very actually promising market. So let me make a clarification. I think TCB particularly we’re talking about process TCB, we have a because of, when a TCB process enter into about 30 micron, the become .

We also have a proprietary, special technology. We are able to make a very clean silicon . So when actually the biggest volume at this moment actually is between 30 to 10 microns. So our process TGB deeper from, hybrid bounding in two ways. Number one, I think hybrid bounding is a focus on pitch below 10 microns. And I continue to say we are focused on up to 10 micron. So actually our focus really at this moment is between 30 to 40 microns. And actually at this moment is a very large market, right? So that’s the first difference, is at this moment, these two technology are not overlap. The second difference actually is our fluxless TCB is a pure backend process, but hybrid bounding is just with some front end process. So some front end investment is needed, right?

So at this moment, it is really not overlap at all. We don’t know. Maybe it will later they will have overlap, but at this moment, we did not claim any market shares from . So within our TCB, yes TCB actually are dealing with the two process. One is a chip-to-wafer, one is a chip-to-substrate. We actually are the leader of a chip to substrate. And we actually are shipping a few chip-to-wafer system to significant customers. And we do expect that we will gain market shares for chip-to-wafer process. And at this moment, I think chip-to-wafer and chip-to-substrate, they are equally large. Right? So I hope I answered your questions.

David Duley: Yes. Just as a follow on to the thermal compression bonding, this is a process that’s used mainly with in the logic segment, right as your competitors talked about it. Are there other mark — is that where you’re seeing your success is with logic providers? And are there other markets that would be adopting this technology?

Fusen Chen: Well, you mean thermal compression, right? Yes, I think with some memory, of course our people also are talking about, hybrid bonding, we don’t have a comment on that. So let me go back. I think we mentioned about identify high potential over $300 million. Previous call, actually we said $80 million backlog. This pretty much will be shipped within 2023. And those $300 million we talked, the majority of which should be in .

David Duley: Okay. And then I just wanted to clarify, in your prepared remarks, I think you said something comparing your current business levels to 2018. Could you just repeat what you said? I just didn’t hear that.