speaker
Operator
Conference Operator

Greetings and welcome to CULIC and SAFA's 2024 Fourth Quarter Results Earnings Call. At this time, all participants are on a listen-only mode. A question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone requires operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Joe Elginde, Senior Director, Investor Relations. Thank you. You may begin.

speaker
Joe Elginde
Senior Director, Investor Relations

Thank you. Welcome everyone to Kulikin's Office Fiscal Fourth Quarter 2024 Conference Call. Fuzhen Chen, President and Chief Executive Officer, and Lester Wong, Chief Financial Officer, are also joining on today's call. Non-GAAP financial measures referenced today should be considered in addition to, not as a substitute for, or in isolation from our GAAP financial information. GAAP to non-GAAP reconciliation tables are included within the latest earnings release and earnings presentation. Both are available on investor.kns.com along with prepared remarks for today's call. In addition to historical statements, today's remarks will contain statements relating to future events and our future results. These statements are forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 and are subject to risks and uncertainties that may cause our actual results and financial condition to differ materially from the statements made today. For complete discussion of the risks associated with Kugel-Gonzova that could affect our future results and financial condition, please refer to our recent and upcoming SEC filings, specifically the latest form 10-K as well as the 8-K filed today. With that said, I will now turn the call over to Fuzhen Chen for the business overview. Please go ahead, Fuzhen.

speaker
Fuzhen Chen
President and Chief Executive Officer

Thank you, Joe. Good afternoon, everyone. Although some of our core market remain in a state of digestion, we continue to anticipate a return to capacity growth in the core, bulk, edge, and APS segments throughout fiscal 2025 as we continue to expand shares through technology transitions in advanced packaging and dispense. Yesterday, we made several positive announcements regarding a high-potential foundry win. Our Copper First hybrid bonding process, which we expect will reach 3-micron pitch, and also an expansion of shareholders' return initiatives. Our leadership in flexible thermal compression, FTC, continues to grow. The collective effort by our advanced solution team and the execution across many parallel customer development programs have allowed us to drive market adoption of this innovative process. This recent win represents significant milestones, which highlight the market potentials our system-level competitiveness and also the broader reach that chip-led and advanced packaging can have on high-volume, more mature portions of semiconductor packaging. First, this milestone highlights that AFTC is a very competitive and compelling industry solution, which is capable of directly supporting many different sectile applications, including the world's most advanced logic and memory production. but also within our high volume logic market, which are transitioning from the mature free chip process. We are very proud of our innovations within TCB technology and also our strong foundational base of leading customers, which illustrates the current market need and the longer term potential of this competitive technology. Secondly, our current win and innovation highlight our leadership position in the technology transition. KNS is the first and the only provider of flux-less systems which are proven in the production environment. Today, we have a global TCV install base of over 100 systems and are approaching $200 million of cumulative TCV sales. Of these install-based, approximately 30 systems are running FTC in either a development or production environment across five major IDM, OSET, and Fungi customers. Maintaining this level of support across different emerging applications and customer locations continues to be accomplished by our dedicated Advanced Solutions team. Across customer engagement, have been essential in the development of our FTC platform, Arptura, and provide the critical market insights which enable us to develop a very flexible and capable system architecture which can support a broad range of new packaging formats. While there are many different marketing acronyms used to explain the growing mix of advanced packaging offerings, such as on-wafer, on substrate, on interposer, on IC. We have built a system which supports a wide variety of material handling configuration and is very capable of supporting the most advanced TCB requirement, whether chip-to-chip or chip-to-wafer. As a need for advanced fine-pitch FTC and copper-phosphate hybrid growth, We expect our competitive position will continue to improve across high-performance applications. Finally, these announcements serve as a reminder that the future of semiconductor assembly will require new and increasingly more complex assembly solutions that can provide greater transistor density at the package level. This growing need extends way beyond the most advanced process known. Emerging packaging technology provides a new level of value increasingly necessary to offset the limitation of two-dimensional no-shrink. Today, our new product portfolio, including vertical wire, HPI, FTC, and copper-first, provide capable solutions where positioned to support packaging-labeled transistor density across end markets. We have been focusing extensively on this transition for years, are pleased with our recent progress and look forward to additional adoption. Turning to the fourth quarter's result, we delivered revenue of $181.3 million and a non-GAAP EPS of $0.34. From an end market standpoint, key portion of general semiconductor, automotive, industrial, and the memory have improved as anticipated, while LED demand remains very soft. We continue to anticipate coordinated recovery of our two most significant end markets, general semiconductor and the automotive industry, through fiscal 2025. For the September quarter, general semiconductor reduced sequentially, primarily Due to strengthening quota, TCV revenue stemming from shipment schedules and the revenue recognition timeline, which create quota to quota variability. Excluding TCV, general semiconductor increased by 11% sequentially, driven by capacity digestion and the returning demand from global offset as anticipated. A lower December quota trend to be seasonally suffer averaging 10% sequential reduction over the prior three years. We are confident rather more bonding demand will improve further through fiscal 2025 due to reasonable unit growth combined with high field iteration rate. For automotive and the industrial, we are seeing demand improvement after a challenging year. As I explained last year, last quarter, The demand improvement in general semiconductor driven by board bonding were completely offset by the challenge within automotive and the industrial during fiscal 2024. At this point, we believe both critical markets are past trough and expect coordinated recovery to accelerate in fiscal 2025. Despite this recent period of capacity digestion, we continue to participate in emerging transition, driven by secular growth in electronics, in electrical vehicle, and the sustainability trends. We have a strong network of global customers who are critically enabling these transitions, which we continue to support. Over the past four years, many countries, in addition to European Union, have implemented targets or policies to incentivize EV adoptions. Just last month, the International Energy Agency, IEA, reported seven million EV was sold globally in the first half of calendar 2024, representing a 25% year-over-year increase. While our core wage SMT and the battery assembly solution are directly enabling this critical transition within the automotive market, we continue to seek out new solutions which can expand our market access. During the recent September quarters, we recognized revenue for an advanced dispense system positioned to support a 30-state EV battery manufacturer. This will represent a new market for our advanced dispense business, but also diversify our growing base of battery-related opportunities in the US, Europe, and Asia. We anticipate follow-up orders in the coming quarters to support this customer's production rack. LED overall remains soft within ball-bounding and continues to be in a state of digestion across the traditional wire-bounded, high-bright lighting market. While this current level of demand will likely persist over the coming quarters, we remain focused on driving adoption of our Luminex laser-based mini-LED placement systems, which is positioned for a direct emissive and advanced big lighting adoption over the coming quarters. During the September quarters, we booked revenue for one Luminex system, which is in less state development and production readiness. We look forward to qualifying additional customers who seek ultra-fast LED placement through 2025. Lastly, we see ongoing strengths related to both capacity addition and technology change within the memory market. In addition to the improving capacity need for traditional stack NAND applications, we are working with key memory customers to leverage vertical wire applications in next-generation low-power D-WAN packages, as previously explained, but also within NAND applications. Initial vertical wire LPDDR solution leveraging a vertical fan-out configuration are currently running at the two key memory customers, which we anticipate will move into low-volume production environment next year. Like LPDDR, memory customers are also seeking new stack packaging format for NAND memory, which also utilize our unique set of vertical wire solutions. Both approaches offer smaller package footprint and performance benefits related to an improved die-layout, low parasitic capacitance, and also low parasitic resistance. These unique vertical wire solutions are a compelling example of how new packaging formats are mitigating no-shrink challenges. We expect similar approaches to extend beyond memory into higher-volume general semiconductor applications over the coming years. We are pleased with our recent progress and the emerging position supporting advanced packaging applications, serving the compute market. This leading-edge market is now being enabled by chiplet and heterogeneous packaging techniques, and was previously excluded from our server market despite our dominant bulk and wage-bounding shares, and has been a key target of our advanced solution strategy. We are proud to demonstrate our strengths, progress, and potential with this long-term advanced solution strategy. A lot of additional technology changes are providing opportunities in several other areas as well. While the current TCA wins for Foundry, IDM, and also customers who are supporting leading-edge applications, expanding our market potentials, we want to remind investors that leading-edge applications are now the only opportunity for advanced packaging. Besides copper-first hybrid and FTC, all production-ready assembly techniques, including vertical wires, are providing new solutions for memory and high-volume general semiconductors. Additionally, high-power interconnect is enhancing power semiconductors and battery assembly approach. These all represent critical technology transition, which are enhancing the value of our respective assembly processes. We are well prepared for this transition and have multiple market-ready solutions to support our extensive customer base. Consortium participation, broadening market engagement, key customer adoption, and a comprehensive set of advanced packaging solutions highlight our preparedness needs. to address next set of industry challenge. After an extended period of capacity digestion, we also expect ongoing improvement and a cyclical recovery across key end market, most notably general semiconductor, automotive, and industrial. Looking into fiscal 2025, we remain optimistic due to the recent technology win, but also due to underlying market condition. The relatively high global vol bounding devaluation rate, combined with reasonable semiconductor unit growth, is expected to trigger additional growth in our core market during fiscal 2025. In addition, the expectation of a broader automotive and industrial recovery are also supported with our results this quarter. Finally, Rather, medical economic improvements are also expected to stimulate global semiconductor unit growth through fiscal 2025. I will now turn the call over to Lester for the financial update. Lester? Thank you, Fusheng.

speaker
Lester Wong
Chief Financial Officer

My remarks today will refer to GAAP results, unless noted. As we anticipate a broader cyclical recovery for our ball and wedge businesses, we remain focused on supporting many different customer engagements and new technology requirements to expand market access further into fiscal 2025. We continue to execute our broad growth strategy intended to expand our market competencies and market share in support of emerging technology transitions. This too has been demonstrated in many different markets and applications over the years, including stack wire bonding, battery assembly, display, and most notably, fluxless thermal compression today. The success of this strategy relies on our technology strengths, close customer collaboration, and also our ability to hedge customer and project related risks where possible. Considering the extent of the Project W related charges booked during the March quarter of our fiscal 2024, we are pleased to announce we reached a customer agreement for reimbursement of a significant portion of our prior impairment charges. We intend to book the benefit within the current December quarter. Looking back at our September quarter results, we generated $181.3 million of revenue and a 48.3% gross margin, largely due to an improving mix of higher performance ball and wedge systems. Non-GAAP operating expenses came in above our expectations due primarily to foreign exchange and end-of-the-year accrual adjustments. During the September quarter, we booked a net income tax benefit of $2 million, primarily due to a $6.5 million tax benefit from a U.S. tax court case, which reduced our one-time transition tax. Prior to today's call, we also announced several updates to our capital allocation programs. First, we receive approval for our fifth consecutive dividend raise. We continue to appreciate the consistency and continuity of the dividend program, which allows us to provide our long-term holders with a competitive dividend yield and income stream for their support. Secondly, we announced the authorization of a new repurchase program, which we anticipate will seamlessly transition as we complete the existing program. Finally, we want to remind investors we have repurchased 10.3 million shares over the prior three fiscal years and continue to maintain a consistent and fairly aggressive repurchase cadence. Over the long term, growing our market access through the organic and inorganic activities remain our priority, although we expect to further enhance long-term EPS growth for investors by continuing our proven repurchase strategy. For the December quarter, we expect revenues of approximately $165 million plus or minus $10 million with gross margin of 47%. Non-GAAP operating expenses are anticipated to be $70.5 million plus or minus 2%. Collectively, we expect GAAP EPS of $1.45 per share and non-GAAP EPS of $0.28 per share. This outlook includes customer reimbursement associated with the March 11th 2024 cancellation of Project W. As Susan mentioned, we remain very focused on many different customer engagements and also very focused to drive market adoption of our growing portfolio of solutions. We look forward to announcing additional product successes as we prepare for the broader core market recovery in fiscal 2025. This concludes our prepared comments. Operator, please open the call for questions.

speaker
Operator
Conference Operator

Thank you. The floor is now open for questions. If you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad at this time. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star 2 if you would like to remove your question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up the handset before pressing the star keys. Again, that's star 1 to register a question at this time. Today's first question is coming from Krish Sankar of TD Cowan. Please go ahead.

speaker
Steven
Analyst, TD Cowen

Hi, thanks so much for taking my questions. This is Steven calling on behalf of Krish. I guess the first one for Fuzan, in terms of your general semiconductor end market, it's nice to see the sequential growth during the September quarter. But just kind of curious, like if we were to dig in a little bit further, in terms of the, I guess, utilization rates at your OSAT customers, I think last quarter you mentioned it would be reaching the high 70% range during September quarter. Did it reach that or exceed that? And I'm just kind of curious, do you still think 80% utilization rates are still the right threshold to think about for when your customers will add capacity? Or is the more historic 90% utilization rate still the right sort of threshold?

speaker
Lester Wong
Chief Financial Officer

Stephen, it's Lester. Let me answer the question on utilization. I think for the September quarter, the utilization rate differs in different regions, as well as in different end markets. For example, in China, utilization rate is over 80%. For the rest of the world, it's probably in the mid-70s, but every last couple of quarters, it's been going up. I think So general semi-utilization rate is also going up, and I think 80% is sort of the threshold we've always set where people start doing more capacity-wise.

speaker
Steven
Analyst, TD Cowen

Okay, great. Thank you for that, Lester. And then just for my follow-up, in regards to the foundry customer win for the TCP Aptura tool, congratulations on that announcement. I'm just kind of curious, like, is that at a major Taiwan foundry? And also, can you give us a sense for the longer-term or the opportunity for the Aptura sales next year and longer term for the time horizon for that?

speaker
Fuzhen Chen
President and Chief Executive Officer

Okay, the recent win actually was a multiple system PO. This is for the near-term production. You know, why we believe we actually have upside, you know, for the next year in the own world. Actually, we have not received a long-term forecast, but we do believe it can be significant for the future. So we probably will give you more updates early next year. But I think this concludes our effort. Actually, it was successful to qualify our products. And we believe long-term it will be good. So short-term, I think we probably will update you in the next couple of quarters.

speaker
Steven
Analyst, TD Cowen

And Susan, just a quick call for that FTC win. Are you guys the sole supplier for that solution or are you sharing that business with another industry peer by chance?

speaker
Fuzhen Chen
President and Chief Executive Officer

Well, I think at this moment, we are the one to receive it. We don't comment in future any possibility, but we are quite confident our capability and also confident the opportunity we have for the next couple of years.

speaker
Steven
Analyst, TD Cowen

Great. Thank you so much.

speaker
Operator
Conference Operator

Thank you. The next question is coming from Tom Diffley of DA Davidson. Please go ahead.

speaker
Tom Diffley
Analyst, DA Davidson

Yes. Good morning. Thanks for the question. I'm curious, just on the general semi-business, how much did that recover during your fiscal 24? And then what are your projections for fiscal 25? maybe can put it in context of where that market is kind of on a normal basis.

speaker
Fuzhen Chen
President and Chief Executive Officer

General semiconductor, so are you talking about, you know, I'd like to know what general semiconductor in FY25?

speaker
Tom Diffley
Analyst, DA Davidson

Yeah, just kind of where we are in this cycle. I mean, obviously two years ago, it troughed and then it came up a bit last year and then your call for growth looks like again this year.

speaker
Fuzhen Chen
President and Chief Executive Officer

Okay, so maybe I can just overview to tell you how market forecast, you know, from industry forecaster and also our view. So, you know, the Q1 actually we got 165. I think, you know, industry digestion looks like still take a little bit longer. But we do see our Q2 actually will be better than Q1. And industry forecast actually believe next year unit growth will be about 7% to 8%, and approximately about 14% in revenue. These are from Gartner. And the growth in the semiconductor revenue driven by number one is the AI, number two is automotive, and a lot of people believe automotive may be already past 12. The third one, maybe to answer your question, is General Semi. And General Semi, I think in 2025, the growth will be in IoT and also AI-edged devices, which is communication devices with AI, like AI-capable PCs and smartphones. And so, these few items added, you know, people believe it's going to be 14% for the semiconductor revenue. So, from our point of view, you know, we got 165, and we do believe Q2 will be better. And as your question to Lister, the current iteration, I think, average we look at about 77%, really not far away from 80%, which is a three-year capacity addition. So talking about our products, talk about Beaubon the first. You know, our Beaubon the peak at about $1 billion in FY21. But as you mentioned, I think recovery, we do see recovery in a 24 compared to a 23, but way up by actually the auto-weakness, right? But, you know, our broadband in 21, 23, and 24 actually is only average $300 million, you know, give and take. So we believe our broadband have a lot of room to go. So we do expect second half, 25, normally is our strong second half. We expect, you know, pre-COVID, our broadband, long way running about 500 to 600, we do believe from the second half over 25, we should running toward this number. So to make a story short, we believe our bull bond will be up more significantly in second half. Mainly driven by China mature north capacity addition. These are 28 nanometer and above. China has a lot of capacity coming up. And also, Southeast Asia, particularly in Malaysia, some demand will come to Malaysia. It is for a China plus one strategy. So, more boundaries, we believe, will be up. And which boundaries, we discussed, probably plus 12. We actually are quite optimistic, received an order in recent quarters, and we believe our TCBN dispense will also go up. That's a give and take of our view and the industry forecaster view about FY25.

speaker
Tom Diffley
Analyst, DA Davidson

Yeah, I appreciate the comment. That's very helpful. And then as a follow-up, Lester, if you could just talk a little bit about the recovery from Project W you're getting in the first fiscal quarter here and how that compares to what the total charge-off was, that would be helpful.

speaker
Lester Wong
Chief Financial Officer

Sure, sure. As you recall, in Q2, Project W was canceled by the customer, and we took an impairment in Q2. So as we indicated in our remarks, I'm very pleased that we've reached an agreement with the customer for the customer to reimburse a significant part of our impairment charges as reimbursement for our costs. And this reimbursement will be – recognized in Q1, and it's already in our current GAAP and non-GAAP guidance. So we provide, in our earnings release, Tom, at the back, there's a table that shows our anticipated non-GAAP items included in the outlook, and there's a $75 million item related to discontinued business claims and proceeds in that table, which is overwhelmingly related to Project W.

speaker
Tom Diffley
Analyst, DA Davidson

Okay, great. Can you just remind us what the total impairment charge was in the second quarter? One hundred and five. Great. Okay. Very helpful. Thank you very much.

speaker
Operator
Conference Operator

Thank you. The next question is coming from Dave Dooley of Steelhead Securities. Please go ahead.

speaker
Dave Dooley
Analyst, Steelhead Securities

Thanks for taking my questions and congratulations on the nice TCB win. I was curious, you mentioned several applications I think in the press release, but as far as your initial read on the situation, do you think you're going to be, is this win at the Foundry going to be more for chip on wafer or the wafer on the substrate? I think the chip on the wafer is the kind of the higher value added step. So I was just kind of curious if you've gotten one or two of these steps.

speaker
Fuzhen Chen
President and Chief Executive Officer

Yeah, actually, to answer your question short, this application is for a fluxless qualification, but it's at the chip-to-wafer level. And this is most advanced, you know, probably chip-to-wafer application and use all fluxless. And all fluxless actually can qualify, you know, a process where both are chip-to-substrate and chip-to-wafer. But for this case, I think... start with a chip-to-wafer to quantify flux labs. But I think there will be numerous opportunities and numerous projects.

speaker
Dave Dooley
Analyst, Steelhead Securities

Okay. And as far as, will these be for mobile applications, or do you think these are going to be for high-performance compute AI applications?

speaker
Fuzhen Chen
President and Chief Executive Officer

So, I actually mentioned, I think this is probably the most advanced application TCB process for the very high-end products.

speaker
Dave Dooley
Analyst, Steelhead Securities

Okay. And then I was curious, you know, you've made several comments during your prepared remarks and in the press release about a coordinated recovery in the general semiconductor market. So obviously your utilization rates have improved. Are the customers coming in and asking for you know, slots or, you know, asking about availability for larger orders. What other signs are you seeing in the general semi-business that gives you confidence that there's a recovery underway?

speaker
Lester Wong
Chief Financial Officer

Well, Dave, I mean, you've mentioned one, right? Utilization rates are across the board on the high 70s in most end markets. And then on a regional basis, it's over 80 already in China. And it's, again, growing in the rest of the world. China has been strong, actually, over the last couple of quarters. And we believe that now the rest of the world is starting to catch up. I think they're starting to, for all the reasons that Fusun said, right, in terms of In China, there's a lot of fabs coming online, wafers, which obviously needs to be packaged. And again, wire bonding is still the cheapest way of interconnect. I think, in addition, we also are are seeing macro recovery a little bit in the economy. Obviously, there's still a little bit of volatility out there. But all in all, I think we are seeing a lot more customer interest, both inside and outside of China.

speaker
Dave Dooley
Analyst, Steelhead Securities

Okay, great. One more question for me is, you had a very robust gross margin in the quarter. I think it was just over 48%. And I was kind of curious, I've asked this question on previous conference calls. You've introduced a bunch of new products in the core wedge and wire bonder business that have higher margin profiles. I'm wondering, you know, as we move into next year, what can we expect for the gross margin profile for the wire and wedge bonder business? Thank you.

speaker
Lester Wong
Chief Financial Officer

Yeah, so for the overall corporate margin, I mean, we are still aiming towards 50%, right? And then you're right. We have started introducing higher gross margin product in both our ball and wedge bonder businesses, and now they are getting qualified, and I think they're becoming a high and high percentage of our overall ball and wedge sales. So I think as we move further into F3, fiscal year 25, I think the margin will start expanding. And also, as we've mentioned many times before, FUSM is very focused on cost reduction efforts, which is still ongoing.

speaker
Fuzhen Chen
President and Chief Executive Officer

Thank you.

speaker
Operator
Conference Operator

Thank you. The next question is coming from Mayor Potpourri of B Riley Securities. Please go ahead.

speaker
Craig Ellis
Analyst, B. Riley Securities

Hi. Yeah, I'm actually calling on behalf of Craig Ellis. And I wanted to ask about something that you said to Tom earlier. which is that you kind of expect a stronger Q2 than Q1. That's sort of kind of been a theme across the board with this opening season. Are there any dynamics that you see that lead you to believe that Q1 might be somewhat depressed unusually?

speaker
Fuzhen Chen
President and Chief Executive Officer

Well, Q1, normally most of the weakest ones are quarter priorities of Q1. You know, normally I think seasonality happens in Q1. And the past three years, it's about 10% down. So this looks like when I wish that. Q2, actually, we do have a few customer actually you know, because of our schedule, because schedule reason, I think already have a slot, you know, over there. So we do believe Q2 will be better than Q1. That's the number we are seeing right now.

speaker
Craig Ellis
Analyst, B. Riley Securities

Okay, thank you. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And then, so another thing, and obviously Audio Industrial has been picking up for, I guess, three consecutive quarters now. Do you kind of expect that linearity to continue into the next year? And do you think that we've sort of seen the trough of the cycle and now we're entering into a more sustainable expansion?

speaker
Fuzhen Chen
President and Chief Executive Officer

Well, I think it impacts us the most in the auto. There are two products. One is a bull bounder. One is a wedge bounder. So all we can tell you is that we have actually believe the wedge bounder is recovering. And so it's a four boundaries. So in terms of linearity, sometimes which boundaries actually have big customers, both in the US and also in China, right? Two customers. The PO comm actually can be big, and so to achieve linearity probably is not easy. But we do believe which boundary in the auto industry will be will be doing well, you know, for the 25.

speaker
Craig Ellis
Analyst, B. Riley Securities

Okay, great. Thank you. And then just one last question. You know, congrats on the TCP++ wins. You know, the way that I'm kind of thinking about it is that it might relate to these leading-edge advanced packaging uses. You know, am I thinking about this the right way? And what sort of end markets are carrying this order pickup?

speaker
Fuzhen Chen
President and Chief Executive Officer

Well, the end market, I... I mentioned, you know, I don't want to speak about customers, you know, critical information, but we believe this is so critical. It's most precision and reliability is very important. And, you know, would be, you know, at this moment, it's actually, it's a... can be for many multiple industry, right? It can be for autonomous in the futures, can be for the high-end, you know, high-power computing. So we believe this is a very typical application, and once qualified, this will run many, many years.

speaker
Craig Ellis
Analyst, B. Riley Securities

Okay. Yeah, okay, that's all I have. Thank you so much.

speaker
Fuzhen Chen
President and Chief Executive Officer

Thank you.

speaker
Craig Ellis
Analyst, B. Riley Securities

Thanks.

speaker
Operator
Conference Operator

Thank you. Once again, ladies and gentlemen, if you do have a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad at this time. The next question is coming from Charles Shi of Needham. Please go ahead.

speaker
Charles Shi
Analyst, Needham

Good evening, Fushun and Lester. Congrats on the TCB announcement. I do have a few follow-up on that. First, sounds like you are characterizing the order as a production order. Can you kind of confirm that? And the second, I do want to ask from the technical perspective, can you kind of speak to why the customer is transitioning to TCB? Because everybody heard about the story about the shrinking bump pitch, smaller bumps. But I do think maybe there is something there regarding the large die. assembly that may require TCB. Can you kind of speak to that? And especially on the large die angle, is that part of the reasons why your tools are getting adopted?

speaker
Fuzhen Chen
President and Chief Executive Officer

Thanks. Okay, I think the qualification I mentioned is full of fluctuates. So, fluctuates, as you know, they are two technologies. We actually believe we have a very strong direction. And actually, you know this is a soldered process, this is a without soldered process. But anyway, you really got to go make a good contact without any oxide, right? So, you know, we believe our process is using actually localized delivery of forming excess vapor to clean the surface, you know, at the bonding stage. We believe this is the right approach. There's no way time in situ clean. And we do believe the surface, the bonding between a copper to copper is very, very good. And the other one actually is a user plasma. And of course, large dye is always in our roadmap. And we believe we can handle very, very large die, because right now, as you know, the die is getting much bigger, and the whole wafer may be only a couple of dies, right? So it's a critical one. So I just want to let you know, we have a capability for a large die, and we are very confident, you know, on our technology, provide a good reliability and good years. That's the reason I think, you know, yes, to answer your question, yes, this is, you know, for production.

speaker
Charles Shi
Analyst, Needham

Got it. So the current order, is it mostly the, you said there's two technologies, right? The one is using plasma, the other one sounds like it's a different technology. Which one is shipping today?

speaker
Fuzhen Chen
President and Chief Executive Officer

Okay. Of course, we are the one shipping and, you know, we use, you know, chemical clean ether forming essence.

speaker
Charles Shi
Analyst, Needham

Got it. Thank you very much. Maybe the other question, regarding high bandwidth memory, any progress you can update us on the TCB for that particular market?

speaker
Fuzhen Chen
President and Chief Executive Officer

Sure. So actually, we are quite excited. You know, for memory, this is going to be our focus. So we have two paths focusing on memory. One is vertical wire. And as we mentioned, these are the four. The first one is going to follow low-power DDR. And cosmic indication, you know, preliminary low-volume production will happen probably end of this year. I'm sorry, end of 25. And with vertical wire fan process, you actually can shrink, you know, about 35%, you know, over the phone factor. So we are quite excited over that. Next one actually is HVM. So we actually quite use a lot of effort engaging our memory customers and to demonstrate our capability. So this is going to be our priority in FI25. I think probably in another quarter or two, we can give you update. But to tell you, I think we are quite confident in our technical superiority. And we are going to put good effort And we have a lot of work to study already and probably give you more update on next one or two quarters.

speaker
Charles Shi
Analyst, Needham

All right, thanks.

speaker
Fuzhen Chen
President and Chief Executive Officer

Yeah. Thank you very much, Charles.

speaker
Operator
Conference Operator

Thank you. At this time, I'd like to turn the floor back over to Mr. Ogundi for closing comments.

speaker
Joe Elginde
Senior Director, Investor Relations

Thank you, Donna, and thank you all for joining today's call. Over the coming quarter, we'll be presenting at several conferences and roadshows. As always, please feel free to follow up directly with any additional questions. This concludes today's call. Have a great day, everyone.

Disclaimer

This conference call transcript was computer generated and almost certianly contains errors. This transcript is provided for information purposes only.EarningsCall, LLC makes no representation about the accuracy of the aforementioned transcript, and you are cautioned not to place undue reliance on the information provided by the transcript.

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