ASE Technology Holding Co., Ltd.

Hello, I am Ken Shum, the head of investor relations for ASA Technology Holdings. Welcome to our fourth quarter and full year 2025 earnings release. I'm joined today by Dr. Tian Wu, our COO, and Joseph Tung, our CFO. Thank you for attending our earnings release today. Please refer to our safe harbor notice on page two. All participants consent to having their voices and questions broadcast via participation in this event. If participants do not consent, please do not ask questions or you may leave the session at this time. I would like to remind everyone that the presentation that follows may contain forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements are subject to a high degree of risk and our actual results may differ materially. For purposes of this presentation, dollar figures are generally stated in new Taiwan dollars unless otherwise indicated. As a Taiwan-based company, our financial information is presented in accordance with Taiwan IFRS. Results presented using Taiwan IFRS may differ materially from results using other accounting standards, including those presented by our subsidiaries. For today's presentation, Dr. Wu will be delivering the company's keynote. I will be going over the financial results, and Joseph will then provide the company's guidance. We will then be available to take your questions during the Q&A session that follows. With that, let me hand the presentation over to Dr. Tianwu.

Good afternoon. I would like to give you a two, three years outlook for the ASC business. This represents the best perspective that we have as of today from our partner as well as customer. Let me talk about the megatrend and future opportunities. The AI server cycle continues, primarily led by hyperscaler and the data center development. There's a lot of activity in the physical layers via edge applications. For example, we're seeing more design perspective regarding to the robotics and the drone, also the equipment surrounding the automotive and the smart manufacturing. And I think the volume will gradually show up in the next two years, which is what we're looking for. We are seeing last year the mainstream business recovered. We believe the mainstream, namely the IoT, the automotive, the general sector, the mainstream business will recover better this year comparing to last year. The second category is what I call the ASE and the Taiwan Cluster. I would like to give you two backgrounds. Many of you have raised the questions. There seems to be a very fast evolution in technology as was demand. So the question is, how will ASE and the Taiwan cluster react to the fast evolution of technology and manufacturing requirement? The second question is, there seems to be a lot of constraints in substrate and maybe memory. And how would that change our perspective regarding to the manufacturing for our partner? I will try to answer that using a longer timeframe. I think there's no question about the leadership in semiconductor manufacturing in Taiwan for this year as well as few years down the road. I don't think there's any question about our position Taiwan as was ASE. We also understand that what is driving the business in AI is mainly the system optimization, which includes chip level optimization, packaging level optimization, as well as power delivery, silicon photonics, manufacturing efficiency, as well as thermal. I would like to remind you, Taiwan has manufacturing leadership in all sectors. In other words, not only we exemplify the strength in each sector, there's a lot of cross collaboration, co-design, co-optimization and co-manufacturing in this era. This is particularly true when there is a supply constraint. The leadership will have a first mover advantage when there is a supply constraint. In the fast evolution, amidst all uncertainty, customers tend to go for the leader to manufacturing the first product in order to maintain the leadership position. So ASE and Taiwan collectively will have competitive advantages over our competitor in this space. Many of you ask if ASE is going to ramp up last year, this year, as was potentially 2027 and beyond. How can we manage all of the factory space, TAPACs, resource management? It is a difficult question, but AAC is not doing this alone. In Taiwan, let me give you a few examples. There's a lot of technology collaboration with our partner, upstream and downstream. In terms of factory space, yes, we are building factory from scratch. We're also acquiring existing factory from our partner, even with clean rooms already installed. Resource planning, you have to look at the whole cluster. So here, I am particularly grateful to our customer as well as our partner for supporting us, helping us to ramp up. Now, once again, when there is a supply constraint, when there's a fast evolution, when everything is running against time, the Taiwan cluster has demonstrated the best efficiency and speed in terms of manufacturing ramp-up. This will set a stage for many of the conversations that we will have throughout this call. Lastly, I want to talk about ASE's Taiwan Plus One. Many of you have asked, what is our strategy in terms of Taiwan Plus One? Our objective is to support all of our customers, satisfying their manufacturing requirement on the global footprint. Here, I want to give you a very simple classification from ASE's perspective. In the future 5 to 10 years, there will be wafers out of Taiwan. There will be wafers not coming from Taiwan. For wafers that are coming from Taiwan, AESC has a very good opportunity to do packaging and testing inside of Taiwan. Might not be all true, but that is the assumption. Now, for wafers that are not produced in Taiwan, they might also come to Taiwan, but they might also not come to Taiwan. So AESC is building footprint primarily in Penang. mainly for the automotive and the future, potentially robotics, to capture customers and wafers that are not produced in Taiwan, but would like ASE to use our automation, as well as all of our advanced technology to help them produce the system package and the system optimization. We're also building footprint Korea and Philippines, But Penang will be the main sector that we'll be ramping up, simply because the Penang cluster has been well-established, second to Taiwan. With that, I would like to give you the 2025 recap. The consolidated revenue grew 12% at the HOKO level, with ATM revenue up 23%. led by leading-edge advanced packaging services and testing business. The LEAP services reached $1.6 billion, accounting for 13% of ATM revenue, up from $0.6 billion in 2024, or 6% of ATM revenue. The general segment grew 13% year-on-year, Testing business grew 36% year-on-year in 2025, supported by expanding turnkey and leading-edge tests. Machinery CapEx totaled $3.4 billion. Building facilities automation CapEx was $2.1 billion in 2025, mainly driven by LEAP services and testing investments. Next page, 2026 outlook. Our CFO will give you more elaboration after this highlight. Expect revenue uptrend to continue 2026 and beyond. Driven by leading edge solutions and broad-based semiconductor demand related to AI proliferation and general market recovery. ATM business leading edge assembly packaging service to double from U.S. $1.6 billion to $3.2 billion, with roughly 75% from packaging and 25% from testing. General segment continues to grow at a similar pace as last year. overall atm revenue to outperform the logic semiconductor market stepping up capex expenditure that joseph would talk about numbers with the investments in r d human capital advanced capacity and small factory infrastructure to support the multi-year growth so our view is asc is is in a very good position together with our customer as well as talent partners and we understand the short-term need we're trying to run against time to fulfill the supply long term we are deploying our floor space outside the top one to capture the next generation opportunity thank you thank you tian

For the fourth quarter, from a financial perspective, our ATM factory loading was slightly better than originally anticipated. With higher loading, we were able to extract higher operating leverage. Our ATM factories in Taiwan ran at or near full capacity, with leap in traditional advanced packaging utilization rates, outpacing that of Wirebond. Non-Taiwan utilization rates continued to show improvement. Our overall ATM utilization rate was around 80%. Our EMS business slowed slightly due to underlying product seasonality. Revenue and profitability was aligned to our initial outlooks. Please turn to page 6 where you will find our fourth quarter consolidated results. For the fourth quarter, we recorded fully diluted EPS of $3.24 and basic EPS of $3.37. Consolidated net revenues were $177.9 billion, representing an increase of 6% sequentially and 10% year-over-year. On a U.S. dollar basis, our sales increased by 2% sequentially and 14% year-over-year. Our gross profit was $34.7 billion with a gross margin of 19.5%. Our gross margin improved by 2.4 percentage points sequentially and by 3.1 percentage points year over year. The sequential improvement in margin is primarily due to higher loading in our ATM business and NT dollar depreciation. The annual improvement is primarily due to higher factory utilization offset in part by the annual appreciation of the NT dollar. We estimate that foreign exchange had a positive 1.1 percentage point impact to our gross margins sequentially and while having a negative 1.2 percentage point impact annually. Our operating expenses increased by $1.4 billion sequentially and $1.6 billion annually to $17 billion. The sequential and annual increases in operating expenses are primarily due to higher R&D labor-related costs. Our operating expense percentage increased 0.3 percentage points sequentially to 9.6% and edged up 0.1 percentage points annually. Operating profit was $17.7 billion, up $4.5 billion sequentially and $6.5 billion year-over-year. Operating margin was 9.9%, up 2.1 percentage points sequentially and up 3 percentage points year-over-year. During the quarter, we had a net non-operating gain of $0.6 billion. Our non-operating gain for the quarter primarily consists of net foreign exchange hedging activities offset in part by net interest expense of $1.7 billion. Tax expense for the quarter was $3.2 billion. Our effective tax rate for the quarter was 18%. Net income for the quarter was $14.7 billion, representing an increase of $3.8 billion sequentially and $5.4 billion annually. On the bottom of the page, we provide key P&L line items without the inclusion of PPA-related expenses. Excluding PPA expenses, gross margin would be 19.8%, operating margin would be 10.4%, and net margin would be 8.7%. Basic EPS excluding PPA expenses would be $3.55. Please refer to page 7. Here you will find our 2025 consolidated full year results versus 2024 full year results. Fully diluted EPS for the year was $8.89, while basic EPS was $9.37. For 2025, consolidated net revenues improved 8% as compared with 2024. Our ATM business improved by 20%, while our EMS business declined by 5% annually. Our ATM business was 60% of our consolidated net revenue, up from 54% in 2024. Gross profit for the year was $114.2 billion, improving $17.3 billion year-over-year, or by 18%. In 2025, our consolidated gross margin improved 1.4 percentage points to 17.7%, principally as a result of higher ATM revenue mix and higher factory utilization of our ATM equipment, offset in part by appreciating empty dollar and higher utility costs. Operating expenses increased $5.7 billion for the year and came in at $63.4 billion. Our overall operating expense percentage edged up 0.1 percentage points to 9.8%. As a general trend, we believe our spending in R&D on an absolute dollar level will continue to increase as the technological complexity of services we offer continues to progress. However, as our R&D investments start yielding associated incremental revenues, such as those in our lead business, we should see increasing operating leverage. Currently, we see our 2026 ATM operating expense percentage declining by near 100 basis points, with our consolidated operating expense percentage dropping 80 basis points. Operating profit for the year was $50.8 billion, increasing $11.6 billion. Operating margin for the year was 7.9%, representing an improvement of 1.3 percentage points from 2024. Our ATM business accounted for 87% of our 2025 operating profit, up from 80% in 2024. We recorded a net non-operating gain of $0.5 billion for the year, including a net interest expense of $5.6 billion versus $4.9 billion in 2024. Most of the net non-operating gain was associated with our foreign currency hedging activities. Total tax expense was $9.5 billion. The effective tax rate for 2025 was 18.4%. We expect our effective tax rate for 2026 to be about 18%. Net income for the year increased by 25% to $40.7 billion. On a full year basis, we estimate that the depreciating NT dollar had a negative 0.9 percentage point impact to our consolidated gross and operating margins. Removing the effect of PPA depreciation, our gross margin would be 18%. Our operating margin would be 8.4%. Our basic EPS would be $10.07. On page 8 is a graphical presentation of our consolidated quarterly financial performance. Our ATM business, driven by expanding LEAP services, continues to outgrow our EMS business. Looking into 2026, we continue to expect our ATM business to outgrow our EMS business. As such, we believe that ATM revenues and profitability will continue to become a larger share of our consolidated total. and continue to positively impact our consolidated margin structure. On page 9 is our ATM P&L. The ATM revenue reported here contains revenues eliminated at the holding company level related to intercompany transactions between our ATM and EMS businesses. For the fourth quarter of 2025, we had record revenues for our ATM business of $109.7 billion, up $9.4 billion from the previous quarter and up $21.3 billion from the same period last year. This represents an increase of 9% sequentially and 24% annually. Our test businesses growth as a whole continues to outpace that of our assembly business. Test revenues grew 13% sequentially and 33% annually. Gross profit for our ATM business was $28.8 billion, up $6.1 billion sequentially and up $8.2 billion year-over-year. Gross profit margin for our ATM business was 26.3%, up 3.7 percentage points sequentially, and 3 percentage points year over year. The sequential gross margin increase was primarily due to higher equipment utilization, depreciation of the NT dollar, and the end of higher summer utility rates. Meanwhile, the annual gross margin improvement was primarily due to higher equipment utilization offset in part by depreciation of the NT dollar. During the fourth quarter, operating expenses were $12.7 billion, up $0.9 billion sequentially and $1.6 billion year-over-year. The sequential and annual increases in operating expenses are primarily related to higher R&D costs and labor expenses. Our operating expense percentage for the quarter was 11.6%, decreasing 0.2 percentage points sequentially and down 1 percentage point annually. The decline was primarily the result of higher revenues during the quarter. During the fourth quarter, operating profit was $16.1 billion, representing a sequential increase of $5.2 billion and an annual increase of $6.6 billion. Operating margin was 14.7%, up 3.9 percentage points sequentially and up 4 percentage points year-over-year. Without the impact of PPA-related depreciation and amortization, ATM gross profit margin would be 26.7% and operating profit margin would be 15.3%. On page 10, we have our ATM full-year P&L. During 2025, we continue to see impressive growth of our LEAP-related services. But we also started to see a stronger recovery of more traditional services toward the middle of the year. Full-year 2025 revenues for our ATM business improved by 19%, with our packaging business up 17%, and our test business up nearly twice the packaging at 32%. Gross profit for the year improved 25% to $91.4 billion. Gross margin for the year was 23.5% up one percentage point from 2024. Margin improvement was the result of higher factory efficiency offset in part by the impact of the appreciating NT dollar. We estimate that the appreciating NT dollar had a negative 1.4 percentage point impact on margins here. Adding that back, gross margin for the year would be well within our structural gross margin range. Our operating expenses increased by $6.1 billion during the year, led primarily by higher labor-related expenses. However, our operating expense percentage decreased by 0.5 percentage points to 12.1%. Operating profit improved $12.1 billion to $44.1 billion, while our operating margin improved 1.5 percentage points to 11.3%. Without the impact of PPA-related expenses, gross profit margin would be 24%, and operating margin would be 12.1%. On page 11, you'll find a graphical representation of our ATM P&L. We believe we have had two main drivers for our improvement trend in gross margin, higher utilization of factory equipment, and a higher mix of LEAP services and revenues. Looking forward, we expect to continue to see a rising mix of LEAP-related business. On page 12 is our ATM revenue by 3C market segments. There aren't many changes here. On page 13, you will find our ATM revenue by service type. Here you can see the two service types which pertain to our LEAP services, bump and flip chip, and testing. Both are becoming a larger component of our overall business. Traditional advanced packaging with LEAP now accounts for more than half of our overall ATM business. Wirebond now accounts for less than a quarter of our overall ATM business. Meanwhile, our test business during the fourth quarter reached 19% of ATM. On page 14, you can see the fourth quarter results of our EMS business. During the quarter, EMS revenues were flat sequentially at $69 billion, well down 8% year over year. The annual decline was the result of differing underlying device seasonality. Sequentially, our EMS business's gross margin declined 0.2 percentage points to 9%. This change was principally the result of product mix. Operating expenses within our EMS business increased by $0.4 billion sequentially and $0.1 billion annually. The increases are primarily the result of a higher headcount and fluctuations related to our profit-sharing program. Our fourth quarter EMS operating expense percentage of 6.2% was up 0.6 percentage points sequentially and annually. The sequential operating expense percentage increases primarily from increases in compensation due to headcount and related bonuses and profit sharing. Operating margin for the fourth quarter was 2.8%, down 0.9 percentage points sequentially and up 0.1 percentage points year-over-year. Our EMS fourth quarter operating profit was $2 billion, down $0.5 billion sequentially and flat annually. On a full year basis, our EMS operations revenues declined 5%. Gross profits for the year declined 3%, with gross margin improving 0.1 percentage points to 9.1%. Operating profit declined 5%, with operating margins staying flat at 2.9%. As the electronics industry pivots towards various applications of AI, so will the focus of our EMS business. For the coming year, we'll see our EMS business continue to extend its system capabilities further into AI and AI adjacent applications such as server, optical, and power solutions. There are a number of EMS projects in various stages of development that will help position the business for growth this year and beyond. On page 15, you will find a graphical representation of our EMS revenue by application. There was a slight shift from consumer devices to computing, automotive and industrial devices. The shifts here are generally due to underlying product seasonality. On page 16, you will find key line items from our balance sheet. At the end of the year, we had cash, cash equivalents and current financial assets of $102 billion. Our total interest-bearing debt increased by $22.7 billion to $272.9 billion. Total unused credit lines amounted to $400.6 billion. Our EBITDA for the quarter was $38.3 billion. Our net debt to equity this quarter was 46%. On page 17, you will find our equipment capital expenditures relative to our EBITDA. Machinery and equipment capital expenditures for the fourth quarter in U.S. dollars totaled $733 million, of which $485 million was used in packaging operations, $218 million in testing operations, and $28 million in EMS operations, and $1 million in interconnect material operations and others. In addition to spending on machinery and equipment, during the quarter we also spent $456 million on facilities, which includes land and buildings. For the year 2025, machinery and equipment capital expenditures in US dollars totaled $3.4 billion, of which $2.1 billion was used in packaging operations, $1.1 billion in testing operations, $139 million in EMS operations, $13 million in interconnect materials and others. For the year 2025, we additionally spent $2.1 billion on facilities which include buildings and land. With that, I'll hand the presentation over to Joseph to present the company's outlook.

Thank you, Ken. Let me go over the first quarter guidance. For 26 first quarter, we will be seeing a much stronger than normal seasonality for both our ATM as well as EMS businesses. Based on our current business outlook and exchange rate assumption of 1 US dollars to 31.4 NT dollars versus last quarter was about 30.9, management projects overall first quarter performance in NT dollar terms to be as follows. On consolidated basis, first quarter revenue should decline only by 5% to 7% quarter over quarter. First quarter gross margin should decline by 50 to 100 basis points quarter over quarter. Our first quarter operating margin should decline by 100 to 150 basis points quarter over quarter. For ATM business, our ATM first quarter revenue should decline only by low to mid single digit percentage quarter over quarter. Gross margin should stay in our structural margin range but fall between 24 to 25%. The sequential decline in both revenue and gross margin in first quarter is largely due to less working days and higher labor costs as a result of higher overtime during Lunar New Year holidays. For EMS business, our EMS first quarter revenue and operating margin should be similar with first quarter 2025 levels. With that, let me give you some color for the full year. For ATM, as Tim mentioned, we expect 2026 leading edge revenue to at least double compared with last year, while demand continues to significantly exceed supply. As for general market, last year's growth momentum will continue this year given AI proliferation and automotive and industrial sector recovery. On ATM profitability, we're expecting a favorable pricing environment for the year. And as operating leverage continues to improve, we expect ATM growth margins to stay within a structural margin range throughout the year. and to improve every quarter, while second-half growth margin to reach the upper end of the range. With increasing mix of LEAP services and overall testing, expanding scale as well as automation, we are optimistic on our mid- to long-term profitability. Lastly, on CapEx, we will remain aggressive in CapEx spending to support the strong business prospects for 2026 and beyond, and to further extend our lead over competition. This year, we plan to add another $1.5 billion in machinery on top of last year's $3.4 billion, of which about two-thirds will be for leading-edge services, Also, needed investment in buildings and facilities is expected to be at a similar level versus last year's $2.1 billion U.S. dollar. With that, thank you.

Thank you, Joseph. During the Q&A session that follows, we would appreciate if your questions could be as clear and concise as possible and asked singularly. We will start by taking questions from live participants and then alternate in questions from our online participants. I, as the moderator, will be receiving each question and repeating and directing each asked question. After a participant's initial question, he or she may ask a follow-up question, clarifications of the earlier question, or another question entirely. Then we will move to the next participant. Participants may return to the queue for any additional questions or clarifications. Thank you. Questions? Can we get the microphone over to Sunny here?

Thank you very much. Hopefully you're not too late to say Happy New Year. So to kick off, so on your lift buses, you just guided revenue to double, to $3.2 billion for this year. So we appreciate a bit more color on maybe a breakdown by OS also seeing full process and also test.

So you're looking for a breakdown of our leap incremental business for the year?

I think Tian just mentioned that we're at least going to double our lead revenue next year. This year, I'm sorry. And the momentum continues to be strong. I think there's still further upside if we're not constrained by a lot of the capacity built that we're scrambling at today. In terms of the breakdown, I think we'll predominantly still be in OS, and also on test side, we'll be on the wafer sort. And I think the full process is going on track, and we do have engagement with multiple customers. But we are going to start seeing the meaningful revenue contribution by later of the year. And we expect to triple our full process revenue this year to reach about 10% of the overall leave revenue. In terms of final tests, I think we will also put in a lot of, most of our focus right now on the wafer sort. In terms of final tests, I think we will start to have meaningful revenue as well by the later part of the year and We should have roughly 10% of the business coming from final tests, of the test business coming from final tests.

Thank you very much, very helpful. And so I think one highlight from earnings was very strong margin expansion in Q4, given improving utilization rate and also better product mix. And so how should we think about from here? You just guided the ICATM growth margin to trend toward the high end, maybe toward like high 20% or even 30%, but how should we think about from there? meaning LIB growth margin should be higher than the structural growth margin trend. And I do think your LIB growth margin will continue to improve, give a better scale, and also improve your mix. And so how should you think about maybe going to next two to three years, how high could the growth margin get to?

So, Sunny, you're looking for a longer-term guidance on overall margins. Yes.

Well, we would like to take it one year at a time. So we'll talk about this next year. Thank you.

Thank you, Sunny. Let's give the microphone over to Hoster.

Yes, thanks for taking my questions. This is Bank of America Haas. Congrats on the good results and also guidance. I think first one is just regarding your mainstream business outlook for this year. You mentioned you will grow at similar pace compared with last year. And in the near term, you also have that part of the business above seasonal. So just wondering what are you seeing regarding shipment versus pricing benefiting on that above seasonal in the near term and also for full year? the breakdown between Schumann and also pricing outlook for that part of the mainstream business. And then I think also related on ICATM, it's just you mentioned that you will exceed at least $3.2 billion for the lead business for this year. I remember last year you only mentioned you will reach $1.6 billion. So it doesn't sound like that you're already fully factoring the potential upside in the lead business. Could you also comment on that?

Thank you. So, Hashir, you've asked two questions here. Going against the rules, huh? Very aggressive. So the first question is relating to mainstream business and what we see in the mainstream business in terms of growth. And I'll summarize your second question after this.

The mainstream business has... two sources. The first source is from IoT, automotive, industrial. Those are the general sector that we are familiar with. Not surprisingly, part of the general loading does come from the AI data center. For example, the power management, the switch, router. So as they're building the data center, we have a difficult time to track which part of the general sector loading comes from the AI data center, which part comes from the general, right? But in general, when we talk to our customers, our general sector loading has been quite decent. The pricing environment, I will say friendly. I will not comment on pricing increase or any customer-specific information. The only thing I might comment is The gold price, the substrate price, whatever the price is going up, then it's up to us and the customer. We do have long-term service agreement. In general, it's a friendly environment. Should I answer the lead? Yeah, well, the second question is the last quarter, we talked about 1.6. Most likely, we'll go to 2.6. and this time we revised to uh 3.2 you're asking what happened uh because now it's just three months later and we have a better visibility about our factory space i have already said many times our actual the uh the demand uh is far beyond the capacity that we're capable of building And I remember last year, one of you asked us, if this is so good, why don't you just do it? We are. However, we have to manage the quality, the delivery. all of the resource planning, and these are complicated progress processes. Equipment lead time and all of the management and also the engineering training, they're not easy. And we just try to do this very, very carefully. So right now, our CFO and myself, our best view is we believe we can achieve 3.2 billion comfortably. And over time, if we have any good news, you'll be the first one to know. Thank you.

Let's see if we can go online.

We have Mr. Goku Hariharan from JP Morgan.

Hi, can you hear me? Yes. Thank you. Thanks for taking my question. We can't hear him.

We can't hear him.

Goku?

Yes, can you hear me now?

Yes, you are on the line, but we have some technical issues here.

Okay.

The audience on the floor cannot hear you.

Let's ask Goku to hold off for one sec. As you guys fix the technical issue, let's transfer over to Charlie over there.

Let me try to fill the void. And Dr. Wu, Joseph, good afternoon. So my first question actually is about your subsidiary, USI. They announced the acquisition of Eugene Lights for the CPO-related component, the optical engine. So I'm wondering what does it mean to the ASC group overall for your CPO business. And going forward, how are you going to split the process between yourself and also USI?

Charlie, you're asking about our fiber optic acquisition at EMS, Eugene Light.

Do we have a comment on that? The optical business is an important direction for the industry. Everybody understand that. The AAC, we're working with our foundry partner, as well as the end customer, trying to implement the silicon photonics part of it, which is a CPO. At a system level, it is not a CPO. However, the optical... It needs to go through from the chip to the packaging as well as to the system as well as to the optical transceiver as well as to the rack and beyond. So I think the optical technology as well as business goes very pervasive and very, very long. I think what you're mentioning is USI is trying to piece together early deployment in terms of future optical roadmap. And this is part of it. And I announced the silicon photonics quite a few years ago. The whole industry is trying to do early deployment and development and positioning. And I think we are going to see some early volume on the silicon and the CPO part of it. And if that goes well, And I believe the volume will start catching up. So the technology development, the manufacturing capacity development needs to happen well before that. So I think this is the USI and the ASE story. There is no conflict. However, it is important that if we can manage the slick and the CPO, the packaging, we need to have a good know-how. as well as inside knowledge on the system level, such that we can support our customer on the overall system optimization if it needs to switch hybrid or electrical all the way to optical. It's a very long question. I'll give you a longer answer.

So it seems like ASC gets involved deeply in this CPU supply chain. And we do hear there are some kind of technical challenging. For example, the together does a major computer with those FAU together on a software. So I'm wondering, is ASC very critical to solve this problem or is more like your foundry partner figure out how to work it and then also to you guys through the production?

Charlie, you're looking for clarification on the actual processes that we can be involved with on CPO?

It's a very difficult question because at the silicon level, the technology complexity It's very, very different. So the founding partner can be working on, like, really, really complicated issues, right? And you're dealing with a silicon level, you know, how to convert the light out. So I will not comment on that. So I have partner addressing those. I also have partner addressing more traditional way. If you do the photo or if you do the electrical separately, and those are more existing. So at our level, we have to manage the really complex, you know, PIC, EIC together or separately. And via different kind of stacking configuration. For example, chip-to-chip, you know, chip-to-packaging, chip-to-rack. So at the packaging level, I will not say it is easier or more difficult. I think packaging level is easier. However, you have to go much, much deeper because you have to deal with different alternatives of the electrical source, the light source, and different configuration, different memory, and who connects to what. At a system level, I will not say it's easier, but you've got to go deeper. So the beauty about Taiwan is we have the chip, we have the CPO substrate, we also have the systems. So in terms of sharing co-optimization trade-off, I believe within this ecosystem, you have a much better chance to hit it, the first product.

Thanks for your clarification. So my next question is to Joseph.

I think you got your two questions there. Sorry. Okay. Let's try to go see if we can get to online again. Is it working? Okay.

Hello? Shall I wait for Goku?

Hello?

Can you hear me? Goku?

Yeah. Can you hear me now?

Yes, I can hear you, but the audience on the floor cannot hear you.

Can you put the microphone to your earpiece?

Can you try again, Goku?

Yeah, hi. Is it better now? No. Yeah.

Still doesn't work.

Sorry. Again, I'll send you my questions later on.

Can you write down your questions on the QA session?

Yeah, I'll do.

Okay, thank you.

Do we have further questions over here? Let's go to Rick over here.

Yeah, hi. Joseph. And Ken, thank you so much for taking my question. I just got one question here regarding your EMS. It seems to me it has been quite muted over the past two years. Are you guys strategically downsizing your EMS business only with focusing on what at the most value. For example, I mean, the question, the reason why I'm asking is because I remember you used to fund a big chunk of your EMS from consumer, like a SIP, for example, wearable, et cetera. So can you share, can you give us more color about your strategy about your EMS going forward?

The EMS business has a few angles. First is your competitive landscape. A competitive landscape inevitably has to deal with the geographical location. And then the second angle will be either the consumer AI or the futuristic sector. And then you would talk about the synergy between the ATM business and the USI business. And I'll try to answer this in a very, very brief way. So what has transpired in the last few years is we understand our consumer business has ramped to a level that we're comfortable with. But we are facing competition. Also, we're feeling constrained. At the same time, this AI sector And also the AI emerging general sector. I really don't know how to describe this. In the AI data center, for example, you have the glass as one example, which is really not a consumer. It's more related to the AI space. Then you have the optical, which optical has been there forever. But because of the data center, we're pushing the system level optimization to a brand new level. And I can give you a few examples. The optical is one example. Power supply absolutely is the second angle. You will have optical transformation or upgrade or paradigm shift. You will have a power delivery paradigm shift. All of this are hinting us with AI, also the system level optimization, there are good opportunities. We can divert the resource and start more synergistically with the ATM part of the business. And that's called a realignment or recalibration. So what we have hinted, which we will report in the next few quarter is, In the AI space of consumer, what are the activities that we're engaging? Also, in the AI data center or the AI-enabled or AI-motivated system-level optimization, what are the efforts that we're making? So I think in the next few years, you will see a much stronger vintage in that direction. So, no, we're not trying to downsize, but the market is shifting, the geographic changes, Positioning is changing. The requirement of customers is changing. So we just have to change accordingly.

Thank you. Just one quick follow-up. So how long would this transition take? So meaning that this year your EMS will continue to undergrow your ATM. How long this transition will take before your EMS catch up the corporate average?

I think this year we are growing. Yeah, this year we're, well, okay. So the question is, okay, your ATM is growing very fast. I view that as a good news because the sector change, it tends to go to leadership, and ASC happened to be a member, a key member of this leadership cluster. And then I think you were seeing some significant input On the EMS part of it, we're making the – for the last few years, there has been a lot of design in pipeline, and hopefully we can give you a better view into the revenue contribution. But as soon as this year, it's not the – yeah.

Thank you. So do we want to – Jai, do we want to give that a try? Okay.

I can read out their questions.

I think we're trying to use a speakerphone methodology to microphone. Very MacGyver-like.

Okay. Third time lucky, I guess.

Hold on. Hold on one second. Oh, perfect.

All right. You could finally hear me.

Great. Okay, thanks. Thanks for going through all the trouble. First question, Dr. Wu, given this very strong CapEx continuing in 26, could we understand how much of this is going to full process packaging? And when we look forward, how big is your full process business likely to scale from the 10% of leap this year? Can it get to like 30, 40% of the total revenue eventually in like a two to three year timeframe? And also wanted to understand whether it aligns with your partner's future plans, because right now there is a bit of a division of labor between you and your partner, but full process kind of a little bit of a, competition with them, but just wanted to understand how it aligns with their future plans.

So Goku wants to know about our full process plans and such.

Well, as Joseph already talked about it, out of the $3.2 billion, we're looking at about 10% full process revenue by the end of this year. There are a few clarifications. We're not competing. And this is part of the cluster ideas, right? Because the waiver level, the founder partner, they will have the first right, the first knowledge, and the first need to come up with the different configuration, 2.5D or 3D packaging. The long-term prospect or motivation, how long or how big do they want to grow the business is up to the founding partner. Our understanding is if we're fully capable of executing, customers as well as partner would like to have second source. All right. Therefore, there will be technology sharing, not on the OSI, but also on the full process. Now, the configuration is a big question, right? It is complicated. As the HVM and also the TPU size grows, The wafer level, the panel level, they have all different configurations of stacking. Panel, substrate. So the technology also evolved very, very quickly. Between the foundry process and know-how, between the customer cost, architectural and design requirement, and the packaging, this is where the co-op organization and the collaboration will come in. Now, everybody has a question. While you're spending so much CapEx, what if the customer switched? First, you have to understand, it's not a one customer thing. There are many, many customers. Are they competing? In a way. But in a way, they're not competing. They're trying to fulfill the diversification of the AI space in all kinds of inference, all kinds of learning language. It's a very, very big market. This is the beginning. What we are trying to do is as fast as we can, come up with alternative and the toolbox. So our partner, their designers, will have the total freedom to pick and choose whichever way they want to put this together for whichever application. I'm telling you, 90% of the applications we couldn't even see yet. this is why the ai is so exciting right so with that i think our capex is is fine the partnership collaboration competition is healthy and all of the iteration and the fast evolution technology for our customer is not a penalty for us is actually a very very healthy for the industry and being the first mover in the Taiwan Foods Mover Cluster, you will have some natural advantage. So I believe this is the good time for us to do this.

Thanks, Dr. Wu. Thank you very much. That's very clear. Second question, we did mention we are expecting the mainstream demand to keep growing similar to 2025, 10 plus percent. Within that, obviously, PC and smartphone related, especially smartphone related, is a pretty big chunk. And some of your larger customers have been toning down on the smartphone demand for the last few weeks or so. So how does this kind of sit within this expectation of mainstream demand continuing to grow at similar pace? I'm sure you've done your math and come up with this assumption, but can you explain a little bit?

So, Goku is looking for characterization of our outlook on our mainstream market.

The mainstream market, you know, the ASE has a large market share on the communication for the cell phone. Again, it's good news, right, and thanks to our customer and long-term support. That sector will continue. There could be some fluctuation that I will not go into detail today. But please remember, we are fully loaded. The AI data center now has the FPGA, microcontroller, power management, router, and all kinds of loading coming to AAC. And you understand that we have signed, we bought two factories for Infineon. We have also announced we are buying another factory in Penang from ADI. We already announced that. That is most likely to close in Q2 this year. With all of this, the Infineon loading, the ADI loading, they're also coming to us as part of the acquisition. Also, the co-optimization and the co-design for today's device and system as well as for the next generation device and system. So when I talk about there's a general sector recovery, I truly mean it. I have seen industrial automotive recovery. On top of that, I have unknown demand, could be AI data center, could be not, from the same guys asking us to run up the loading. And of course, because our fully automated general process We could be gaining market share, and that we have to look at ASE versus our competitor in all different spaces. I will not comment on that. But in general, we feel comfortable for 2026 and beyond for our general sector recovery.

Got it. Very, very clear. Thank you very much.

So we want to go to another online. Laura?

Laura. Hello. Hi. Yes. Hi. Good afternoon. Can you hear me? Yes, I thank you very much for taking my questions and also congrats for the great result. I also have a question on the lead business. Actually, we see that there's various different type of advanced packaging as Dr. Tian mentioned that definitely we see the great chance ASC is seeing promising growth with the AI chip involving, but we see that the chips and die size are getting more complex. and they are various different type of like a panel base. Even some are talking about the chip on waiver on PCB. So can you share with us your plans on various packaging type and also your strategic focus, and how should AAC fit and leverage your technology to get into these different type of the packagings going forward?

All right, so the question is, again, it's a loaded question. Now, because of the AI system demand, there's two family of thoughts. We believe that the chip will get bigger. Therefore, the rectal size will get bigger. Therefore, the chipless size will get bigger. And therefore, the 3D, the 2.5D, and the HPM will get bigger, which is why you need the silicon photonics, which is why you need a new conceptual power delivery method to provide a vertical power supply. That's one family thought. The second family thought is because of the efficiency of design, everything will go smaller. I will not get into that debate. All I can tell you is the last four years, things just keep getting bigger. All right? Therefore, ASU will prepare both. If you can handle this in the 300 millimeter wafer form, we got that already. But if the chitlet size, the requirement, are going unreasonably large, we will have the 310 by 310 panel to give you a better relief. Now, will the 310, 310 go to 620 by 620? Depending on the volume, also the technology requirement, also our process capability, can we handle a larger panel size with the kind of resolution and IO count they require? But ASC's job is, by the end of this year, We will have a fully automated 310 by 310 in production. Today, we already have manual. But in my view, the manual process doesn't count. I can only count in this space. It needs to be fully light out. By the end of this year, we'll have that. That will provide the first try. in the throughput and cost improvement all of the wafer-level process that we do. Now, our foundry partner and our customer will continue to try the different configuration. I cannot comment. Our job is to provide all the toolboxes So pending on your resolution, IO, and cost requirement, we will give you different options. And I'm comfortable to say that Taiwan cluster overall, we have the most toolbox and the best option with capacity in place. We will be the fastest to ramp up in the world. ASE being part of this ecosystem on the packaging world, we are responsible to provide more packaging-level toolbox, including panel, including CPO, including the next-generation power delivery called the VRM that we have not talked much about it. But the whole idea is we will leverage this opportunity to strengthen our portfolio and the R&D in-depth understanding about a system requirement. It's not just co-ops. It's not just the full process. It's after this AI boom, the following through system level paradigm shift and improvement, we need to put all of this in place. And this is part of the ASC's vision. We will co-work with Foundry, as well as our USI EMS arm, as well as the other system assembler partner in trying to come up with a total solution from chip all the way to system. Long term. All right.

Yeah, thank you very much. Very comprehensive, very exciting. My second question is about the gross margin. As we see that actually these advanced packaging contribution continue to go in up, and overall we see that ASP trend is more friendly, as you just mentioned. Can we kind of expect the overall ATM gross margin later this year will be able to reach 30% or potentially to be higher?

Laura has a question in terms of the ceiling of our structural margin. Right.

Yeah, as I explained earlier on, I think, first of all, this year, starting from the second half of last year, we're already starting to see the improvement in the operating leverage as we continue to improve our ramp-up. And I think for this year, we are confident to say that we will see throughout the whole year, every quarter, we will have our gross margins fall into the structural range. And so in the first quarter, we will see, well, our margin will be between 24% to 25%. And then sequentially, every quarter, we will see continuous improvement in our margin. And also by the second half of the year, we will see our gross margin closing in on the upper end of the structural margin. There is further room for improvement as we continue to reach an optimal ramp-up stage. And we, in the longer term, as we continue to expand our leading edge services, expand our testing business, also continue to reach a full ramp-up, I think there's further room for improvement. But as Tian mentioned, in terms of the margin movement, we will take one year at a time and see how the product mix will shift and how the utilization will improve to see whether we need to adjust our margin guidelines.

Yeah, great. Thank you very much. I'm very looking forward to that. Thank you.

I'm sorry, I don't know your name. Please, name and company, please.

Hello, Joseph and Dr. Wu. My name is Alan Patterson. I'm with EE Times. You mentioned that you're buying clean room space from foundries. And I would just like to know, is that a first? I've heard from people in the supply chain that this is something – Advanced packaging is something that's been done primarily by TSMC. So I'm just wondering if this move into advanced packaging like 2.5, 3D, is this something new?

The gentleman would like some clarification on clean room specifications related to advanced packaging.

First of all, I said that we're buying factory with clean rooms already built from partners. I did not specify founding partners. We have many partners. And also, in terms of doing the full process, 2.5D, no, it is not new for ASC. We have been doing this for quite some time.

And then maybe a follow-up question, is photonics a new area for you? You had mentioned that this is something that you're moving into. I mean, there are many different flavors of photonics, so I wonder if there's any one that you see with greater potential for your company.

You would like an outlook in terms of how we view the CTO market?

photonics is a new technology it represents a paradigm shift and i think there will be a first mover coming in and then we will see how the first mover uh the uh affairs all right and the i will not comment the uh there there are Different alternative. And we always believe that different alternative will serve different solutions for different architecture requirements. So we will not take size in terms of the – there's a high-end, mid-range, and also low-end and different requirements between the scaled-off, the scaled-out, chip-to-chip level, chip-to-package level, or the package-to-package level. They're all different. So again, our job is to develop the toolboxes for the designers so they have the freedom to choose based on whatever. But keep in mind, the electronic signal and also the optical signal is continuous. You've got to go through all the way. And our job is to make sure that whatever technology is not limited to any kind of segment, it just needs to go all the way down at a different cost of the potential.

We're going to restart the queue here, so Haas, you want to ask another question?

Thanks for taking my question again. I think just a quick follow-up on your CAPEX because you mentioned you have a lot of amazing demand opportunity no matter it is in mainstream or in the AI space going forward. But just wondering if you could share with us on your view just regarding the capital intensity targets because this year you definitely grew your CAPEX from the amount perspective. But your sales definitely seems to be outgrowing this year based on your guidance just now. So just wondering if you have a guidance or a view on your capital intensity in the long term how should we think about the pace that you are going to grow your capacity versus your customers demand how would you balance that us is looking for a financial balance in terms of uh how we view our capital intensity over time and how that moves and changes there's no guideline

You know, Cap Pax, we, Joseph and I, we were very comfortable with 2 billion for the longest time. And then for some reason, you know, we just showed up 4 billion. And then we showed up like 5 billion. And then Joseph was talking about even bigger number. You know, I'm not comfortable. I think he is not comfortable. We're all under pressure. Long term, there's a little... Half of me saying that, yes, spend more. And half of me saying, are you sure we're doing the right thing? Listen, we're human beings. We struggle exactly the same way you struggle. The only way we can do is we look at the landscape. AI is brand new. This is like the beginning of a boom. I mean, I won't call it Big Bang. This is too religious. It's a boom. And then we are in the first mover leadership position. We have all of the support from everybody and customer. This is our time to shine. And as we move in, we are responsible for the CAPAC discipline. And then there's a financial, I mean, Joseph is very clever, managing different instrument, loan. We're learning all of this. And our guys, you know, we have, I mean, 64,000 people in Taiwan, 100,000 worldwide. It's a good number. You want to stretch them, but you don't want to stretch them to a point they all went to hospital. So as you're doing this and the customer is giving you different voices, I mean, they're a good customer, they're not so good customer. So you're dealing with a lot of this kind of thing. Can I give you a view about five years from now, what's our CapEx? No. One year at a time, we would deal with the margin execution. If anything, I do not want to disappoint my partner and customer. I would rather deliver whatever we have promised and make everybody happy going forward until the next stop. I will not stretch. Are we aggressive? Yes and no. I don't think we're pushing ourselves to the limit, nor should we believe we should. I'm not answering your question because I don't have an answer for you.

That's great. That's great comments. I think just a follow-up. Question that your lead business definitely has been growing quite significantly in the past few years and also this year and probably in the coming years. And as a good leading indicator, KPACs that you have also been spending quite meaningfully in the past couple of years and also this year. So just wondering if you could share with us your metric regarding the RYC for that part of the KPACs, especially on the advanced nodes versus your traditional business.

The logic is very simple, right? The CAPEX is a leading indicator of technology capacity and appeal, also margin. If you spend CAPEX, you should come up with, your depreciation will go up. You should at least cover that part of depreciation. Otherwise, you shouldn't be doing this, right? So if with CAPEX, the margin shows improvement, that means you're on the right track. And then you add the cat packs. Another improvement, you're on the right track, which means that the market supports you and you have a better visibility. Also, your team becomes more sophisticated and they're ready to launch the next level of endeavor. We're engineers. We climb stories, floors, one step at a time. So you're asking 2026, we will spend more CapEx. What does that imply to 2027? I already gave you the answer. Hopefully, we can achieve that. But we will not know until third quarter or fourth quarter of 2026 that we can comfortably say, listen, this is what we have come up with. We're making calibration. As we move along, we will give you a better visibility of how that calibration is.

Yeah, I think to sum up your question, we're still in this mega trend, and we're certainly not going to be shy on making the necessary investments in terms of CapEx, also as well as the R&D dollars that we're going to put in. to keep our lead in the – and we are the chosen partner around this whole ecosystem here. So it's not the time for us to be conservative. So this year, of course, our CapEx is much higher than last year, which last year is much higher than the year before. And we're seeing this trend actually continuing, maybe not just for this year, next year also. We'll continue to spend quite large in terms of CapEx and R&D dollars. But having said that, I think we're still in a very healthy financial condition here. And we do have multiple cost-effective funding sources to support our growth and support our investments. And, you know, in terms of return, we are actually seeing that, first of all, these leading-edge services is margin accretive. And it's certainly return accretive as well. So we're seeing that happening already. And from last year to this, I think both on ROE or ROIC standpoint, we are seeing improvement, although I'm not giving out any real numbers at this point yet. But we are seeing that our investments are paying off.

Thank you. Just one more comment. The CapEx dollar and capacity are not the best entry barrier, but it is an entry barrier.

Charlie, you want to follow up?

Thank you. So my question to Joseph was very similar to Laura's question on gross margin, but more focused on those structural factors. So I think in the past hour, we talked about utilization effects. I think it's more short and cyclical. And you talk about the product mix improvement. I think it's more structural. How about the pricing? We are hearing that for your wire-bound flagship, et cetera, it seems like there is a certain price hike this year. Do you think it's more like a structural price hike? And is that ASC-specific, or do you think it's kind of the overall ATM industries enjoying this kind of structural price hike? Thank you.

Charlie is looking for commentary on the ASP environment.

The price hike is not part of the structure margin. During the COVID days, we have gone through that. Technology is. The product makes the value provided is. And when Joseph commented, we have not included the price hike. The price hike is a very optimistic approach. And depending on the management philosophy, also relation with customer, it will be exercised when needed. But we, in general, we do not comment on the price increase with customers.

I think on pricing, we will continue to seek the most suitable pricing strategy depending on the situation and also the requirement of our return requirement.

Thank you. Thanks. Yeah, and a follow-up question on the capacity and clean room parts. So I'm wondering whether ASC have some concrete plan to solve the clean room, right? I think KSNC announced they have a piece of new land here, there. So you have sort of the... visibility, right? And if not, whether there is going to be a getting factor for your future spending or business growth.

Charlie is asking about the physical factory progress and development that we're working on.

In your capacity, if you can break down your infrastructure portion, I think that would be great.

Okay. Separation of machinery and equipment and facilities, CapEx.

This year, I think for the building and facilities, we are still looking at about $2.1 billion, which is about the same level as last year. Yes, finding new locations and new factories is a bit of a challenge, and we're doing all we can to look at all over the island. to find a suitable location for our new buildings. As Kim mentioned, that includes green fuel factory buildings, as well as buying some existing from our partners. So we are going a while to find a suitable location for that. Since Joseph, since Kim.

Do we have a follow-up question? I think we have time for one more question if we want to ask for one more question. If not, we can wrap it up at this time. Thank you very much for attending our full year, fourth quarter 2025 earnings release. Hope to see you next time. Thank you.

Happy New Year.