Kulicke and Soffa Industries - Earnings Call - Q1 2025

Executive Summary

• Q1 FY25 revenue was $166.1M, non-GAAP EPS $0.37, and GAAP EPS $1.51, with GAAP boosted by a settlement related to the FY24 “Project W” impairment; non-GAAP operating margin expanded to 11.4% as advanced packaging traction and OpEx discipline continued.
• Management guided Q2 FY25 revenue to $165M ±$10M, GAAP EPS ~$0.03 ±10%, non-GAAP EPS ~$0.19 ±10%, and GAAP OpEx ~$79.3M (~$70.5M non-GAAP), with gross margin expected at ~47% (CFO remarks).
• Advanced packaging momentum remains the structural driver: dual‑head Fluxless Thermo‑Compression (FTC) shipped to a key foundry (enabling HBM), FTC customer engagements near 8–10, and vertical‑wire initial production expected in 2025 with a larger 2026 ramp; ball/wedge businesses positioned for cyclical recovery as utilization approaches capacity-add thresholds.
• Estimate comparison: S&P Global consensus was not retrievable at the time of analysis (tool request limit hit), so we cannot quantify beats/misses vs Wall Street; management did not cite consensus in materials (see “Estimates Context”).

What Went Well and What Went Wrong

• What Went Well

  • FTC/advanced packaging: “We shipped our latest… dual head configuration to a key foundry customer… [providing] nearly twice the throughput” and broadening HBM access; FTC customer engagements span foundry, IDM and OSAT, with 8–10 customers using/qualifying tools.
  • Gross margin and cash: Q1 gross margin reached 52.4%, and adjusted free cash flow was $8.7M; total cash and short-term investments stood at $538.3M.
  • Settlement benefit: GAAP results benefited from a ~$71M customer settlement related to Project W; CFO highlighted this as key to strong GAAP margin/EPS in the quarter.

• What Went Wrong

  • Core demand still soft sequentially: Net revenue declined 8.4% QoQ and 3% YoY; management cited seasonal softness and delayed customer decisions around Lunar New Year and macro dynamics.
  • Guidance implies lower EPS/GM near-term: Q2 GAAP EPS guided to ~$0.03 and non-GAAP to ~$0.19; CFO guided gross margin to ~47% as the one-time GAAP benefit rolls off and mix normalizes.
  • Visibility constraints: Management reiterated ball/wedge are in late-stage downturn with recovery skewed to 2H FY25; customers delaying capacity adds reflect macro/geopolitical uncertainty.

Transcript

Operator (participant)

Greetings and welcome to the Kulicke & Soffa Q1 2025 Conference Call and Webcast. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. A question-and-answer session will follow the formal presentation. You may be placed into question queue at any time by pressing star one on your telephone keypad. If anyone should require operator assistance, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It's now my pleasure to turn the call over to Senior Director of Investor Relations, Joe Elgindy. Please go ahead, Joe.

Joe Elgindy (Senior Director of Investor Relations)

Welcome, everyone, to Kulicke & Soffa's fiscal Q1 2025 Conference Call. Fusen 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 at 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 a complete discussion of the risks associated with Kulicke & Soffa 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 would now like to turn the call over to Fusen Chen for the business overview. Please go ahead, Fusen.

Fusen Chen (CEO)

Good morning, everyone. Over the past several quarters, our General Semiconductor and Automotive end markets have shown signs of inventory and capacity digestions, and we continue to anticipate a gradual improvement in fiscal 2025. In parallel, we have continued to demonstrate technology leadership position Fluxless Thermo-Compression and Advanced Dispense.

Visibility within our higher volume ball and wedge market is typically limited this time of the year. Regardless, our core business remains in the late stage of a market downturn. While we continue to anticipate a return to broader capacity addition within the core ball, wedge, and the APS businesses through fiscal 2025, due to improved tool utilization rate, market trend, and reasonable industry growth expectation, we remain focused on what is within our control, primarily ongoing development, customer qualification, and the market adoption of our newest system.

Additionally,Fluxless Thermo-Compression technology continues to broaden, and we are extending our leadership through new offerings and customer engagements. Approximately three weeks ago, we Fluxless Thermo-Compression, or FTC, system in a new dual head configuration to a key foundry customer.This system provides nearly twice the throughput as our existing production-proven FTC system, which was already qualified and already provides an additional value proposition for advanced logic customers within its single head configurations. These new dual head configurations will further extend value for advanced logic customers and also provide access into high bandwidth memory markets. Beyond this new dual head system, we are aggressively developing a future panel-based platform, which will further extend the value of FTC.

Of note, we are pleased to extend our FTC customer engagement, which now includes a leading memory customer in addition to our existing base of leading IDM, foundry, and OSAT customers. This new memory engagement is a supporting process development for future generation HBM applications, leveraging our FTC leadership. FTC is positioned to enhance the future HBM process, providing critical performance, form factor, and efficiency enhancements by significantly reducing pitch and increasing I/O density for future AI and cloud computing workloads.

Last, the copper-to-copper TSV process is continuing to pick up momentum and is currently being reviewed by a leading IDM customer in addition to our previously announced customer. Our copper-first solution provides hybrid benefits such as a zero-die gap, ultra-fine pitch, and a direct copper-to-copper interconnect without a licensing fee, front-end production requirement, or Adeia issues, which are associated with the initial hybrid bonding technologies.

These benefits are available today through our broader FTC portfolio, which is well-positioned to provide additional value for emerging advanced logic and advanced memory applications. This technology leadership in FTC is enhancing our positions within the broader TCB market as well. We recently accepted orders from two new advanced packaging customers for several new Arctura systems. We estimate the TAM for TCB in calendar year 2024 has exceeded $300 million, which represents a key market milestone for two significant reasons. First, it highlights TCB is comparable in annual revenue to the mature flip chip market for the entire market.

Considering flip chip has been in high volume production for over three decades, this milestone has reached relatively quickly for thermocompression. Second, TCB adds significant incremental value beyond traditional packaging techniques due to its ability to efficiently stacked die, increase package-level transistor density, and simplify the wedge bonder

TCB technology has a long life ahead and is anticipated to grow significantly over the long term. Over the coming years, we anticipate the broad TCB market to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 20%-25%, with FTC growth expected to grow materially faster over the coming years. During fiscal 2025, we anticipate additional customers to move into higher volume FTC production.

The need for more and more related packaging solutions is emerging rapidly, and we are excited to be leading this transition with our market-leading FTC solution. This broad industry evolution to more advanced chiplet-based package is still in an early stage and is anticipated to play out over the long term driven by emerging artificial intelligence, cloud computing, and the edge device requirement.

As explained over the recent quarters, we have secured clear Fluxless Thermo-Compression, which will play an increasingly important role within future heterogeneous and chiplet-based applications. Currently, most advanced logic applications are dependent on aging flip chip technology, which we anticipate will continue to transition toFluxless Thermo-Compression applications. we continue to demonstrate consistent progress to expand our TCB portfolio, customer base, and market access.

This highlights our ongoing leadership, industry focus, and the long-term potential of this emerging technology. Turning to our financial results, for the December quarters, we deliver $166.1 million of revenue, 52.4% gross margin, and a non-GAAP EPS of $0.37. GAAP EPS of $1.51 was largely supported by customer's reimbursement associated with our fiscal Q2 2024 impairment charge of Project W. Lester will provide additional details shortly.

From an end market standpoint, the December quarter is generally driven by seasonality within the General Semiconductor market, although we continue to anticipate broader industry growth and demand for our core solution within fiscal 2025. The General Semiconductor market continues to be largely in a state of capacity digestion, with the ball bonding revenue sequentially lower from September, as expected.

We continue to expect we are in a late recovery stage and remain positive on broader recovery through fiscal 2025. Our ball bonding team remains very active developing new features and platforms to support the evolving high-volume assembly market. We look forward to sharing more information and broadening the ball bonding portfolio later in fiscal 2025. Within automotive and Industrial, we have seen a demand improvement over the same quarter last year related to EV and also power semiconductor demand.

During the December quarter, we shipped several sets of battery assembly systems to several customers, including a leading EV company and a promising solid-state battery manufacturer. We continue to anticipate additional recovery in the power semiconductor market over the coming quarters. Similar to General Semiconductor for ball bonding, auto and Industrial is our primary market for wedge bonding.

And similar to ball, our wedge team is aggressively developing new systems to expand our dominant heavy wire wedge position into single wire, in Welder, also clip attach market, which will help us better support the rapid evolution of emerging automotive and power semiconductor needs. This transition is being driven by growing global demand for more efficient power delivery and storage. We are playing a critical role leading the transition from lower conductivity aluminum interconnect, which we are the standard in the power semiconductor applications, to copper interconnect.

As we are currently demonstrating within the FTC copper-to-copper TCB process and have also led the transition from gold to copper in the high-volume ball bonding market over 10 years ago, we have inherent competency in copper bonding, in which the benefit of more expensive materials like copper are significant, as it supports more efficient charging, energy generation, and high-power applications such as AI and cloud computing. We are excited to support customers through this potentially significant long-term wedge transition and will provide additional information on this emerging opportunity over the coming quarters.

Finally, within memory, we remain focused on driving vertical wire adoption for emerging applications within both DRAM and NAND. Separately, vertical wire continues to be another emerging memory solution for several global memory customers who are either requesting information, developing their process, and/or beginning to produce a sample to drive market adoption for future stacked DRAM applications.

As explained last quarter, vertical wire-based assembly is positioned to support future high-volume stack memory applications, but also significant potential to enable future high-volume stack logic applications. Similar to TCB, we have a significant technology leadership position with a growing base of engaged customers who are developing new vertical wire package. Our process and development engagement have recently increased. We are currently working with leading memory customers in Korea, the US, and China.

Over the coming year, vertical wire connected memory applications are anticipated to move into higher volume production. In the longer term, we expect this enabling technology to extend into higher volume General Semiconductor market. As explained earlier, in addition to vertical wire, we are also supporting a major memory customer who is examining fluxless HBM alternatives in coordination with our highly capable FTC process development team. The company continues to be at a unique period of time.

We are well-positioned for several promising high-growth opportunities that are supporting long-term critical technology transition in both leading-edge and high-volume semiconductor assembly. While we have already experienced core market improvement, we continue to anticipate both ball and wedge will reach more normalized levels of demand within fiscal 2025. Although we anticipate this broad and coordinated recovery to be imminent, we remain focused on what is within our control.

Our priorities are to maintain our aggressive cadence of development across our sub-market while we continue driving customer acceptance for our new product and service. I will now turn the call over to Lester for the financial update.

Lester Wong (CFO)

Thank you, Fusen. My remarks today will refer to GAAP results unless noted. As Fusen explained, we continue to anticipate a broader cyclical recovery for our ball and wedge businesses driven by coordinated improvements within General Semiconductor and auto, Industrial end markets.

We remain very focused to support multiple development programs, product releases, timelines, and customer qualifications. Looking back at our December quarter results, we generated $166.1 million of revenue and 52.4% gross margin. The strong gross margin performance was partially related to revenue recognized in the December quarter for systems expense in prior periods. During the December quarter, we also recorded a gain of $71 million due to customer settlement associated with our fiscal Q2 2024 impairment charge. Non-GAAP operating expenses, which exclude this item, were $68.6 million.

This was below prior expectations due to a favorable foreign exchange gain as well as an ongoing focus on operational and development efficiency. During the December quarter, we booked GAAP tax expenses of $11.3 million, primarily related to the customer settlement benefit, but also related to our mix of profit and loss across entities during the quarter.

We continue to anticipate our effective tax rate will remain above 20% per quarter through fiscal 2025. As announced on December 2, 2024, we also completed our previous repurchase program and began our new $300 million share repurchase program. Repurchases for the Q1 represented activity from both programs and totaled $36.9 million, reducing share outstanding by nearly 800,000 shares.

Turning to the outlook for the March quarter, we expect revenue of approximately $165 million, $10 million, with gross margins of 47%. Non-GAAP operating expenses are anticipated to be $70.5 million, plus or minus 2%, and we expect GAAP EPS of $0.03 per share and non-GAAP EPS of $0.19 per share.

As we await broader core market recovery, we remain very focused on key development qualification and market adoption across our growing portfolio of solutions.We look forward to announcing additional success with these efforts over the coming quarters. This concludes our prepared comments. Operator, please open the call for questions.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. We'll now be conducting a question-and-answer session. If you'd like to be placed in the question queue, please press Star 1 on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press Star 2 if you'd like to move your question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing Star 1. One moment, please, while we pull up our questions. Our first question is coming from Krish Sankar from TD Cowen. Your line is now live.

Krish Sankar (Analyst)

Joe, thanks for taking my question. I actually had three of them. Number one, Fusen, you kind of said that March quarter general semi should grow.Is it fair to assume that sequentially into June and September, your bonding revenue should grow sequentially?

Fusen Chen (CEO)

Yeah. Okay. So over actually just the past few weeks, Gartner actually revised CY semiconductor FY25 growth from 17% to 13%. And we also see our Q2 actually due to Chinese New Year and also global political dynamics, some of our customers actually delayed their investment decision to after Chinese New Year. But despite the change, we still anticipate even 13% of semi growth in CY25 should benefit all of our business.

And the downturn typically takes around six to seven quarters, and we are approaching 10 quarters. So we believe we are in the late stage of the downturn. So I wish I answered your question. And we still anticipate the transition to be below normal, below normal, more normalized level of the ball bonding later this year.I hope I answered your question, Fusen.

Krish Sankar (Analyst)

Yeah, that was helpful. Just to follow up on that point, normalized level for fiscal 25, is that a $550 million run rate, or how do you think about what is normalized core demand?

Fusen Chen (CEO)

Okay. Okay. Let me answer this way. Typically, our second half is always stronger than the first half. We expect the normalized level probably will reach probably later part, end of our FY25. It's not unreasonable to expect our second half will be 20%-30% or even more than 30% higher than our first half. Give me an example. 20% will lead to about $730 million, and 30% will lead to $760 million, right, just for the revenue. How I define the normalized, I'll give you an example. At the peak cycle, our ball bonding revenue is at $1 billion.

By average of FY 2023, 2024, actually, we only see just over $300 million. So we believe our normal year, just ball bonding revenue itself, should be around $500-600 million. So that's really our expectation. Industry probably will enter a normalized level, maybe end of our fiscal 2025. And when we enter 2026, we expect probably full year will be a normalized year.

Krish Sankar (Analyst)

Got it. Got it. Very helpful. And then just a quick follow-up for Lester. The December quarter margin strength, you said revenue recognition consistency that I shipped before. Were these TCB, and how many tools were they?

Lester Wong (CFO)

No. So Krish, these are tools that are associated with Project W. The customer ordered these tools prior to the cancellation of the project as part of the impairment, which we took in Q2 FY 2024. The cost of these tools were included in the impairment.

Fusen Chen (CEO)

Now that we have settled with the customer on Project W, these machines have been recognized in the quarter, which obviously helps strengthen the gross margin.

Got it. Got it. Awesome. Thanks, Lester. Thanks, Fusen.

Lester Wong (CFO)

Great. Thank you.

Fusen Chen (CEO)

Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. Next question is coming from Craig Ellis from B. Riley Securities. Your line is now live.

Craig Ellis (Analyst)

Yeah. Thanks for taking the questions, guys. And congratulations on some of the progress in the business, like what you're seeing with high bandwidth memory DRAM. Fusen, I wanted to go back to where Krish started and just see if I could get a follow-up. So really like the potential for more normalized core business revenues and ball and wedge bonding. But from all the observable data points, I think we and others see PC, smartphone, other high-volume demand, and auto Industrial is really very anemic.

Clearly, there's some good company-specific things going on in AP right now. What are your customers telling you about their need for incremental capacity as they move into that second half fiscal period for you and need to add capacity to meet demand, which seems more bouncing along the bottom than anything else?

Fusen Chen (CEO)

Okay. I think I mentioned even in Q2, we see customer investment decision actually pushed out after that decision will be delayed until Chinese New Year. Also because of their concern about the global dynamics. Q2, second half, typically is really our stronger half, right? As I mentioned, I think our downturn already takes about 10 quarters rather than traditional like a six quarters.

We do believe there will be also some investment. I think a mature node, mature node capacity will come up, particularly in China for 28 nanometers and above. We are actually at this moment still quite bullish about our second half. Also, when we enter later part of our second half and into 2026, we believe the long wave for the ball bonding can reach to 500 to 600. 500 actually is not high.

The peak level actually is 1 billion. And at this moment, it's only 300 million, right? So 500 million is just go back to a pre-COVID level. And the whole industry actually, semiconductor content continues to increase. And the downturn takes very long. And we do believe it's a very late stage of downturn, right?So when we enter 2026, I think we also not only ball bonder have a good potential. We also see a wedge bonder we can take market shares from a new product like a Pin Welder and clip attach. this is for high-power semi. And we also see the momentum of a vertical wire, our APS and also ATS, right?So I wish I give you the debrief for the next couple of quarters.

Operator (participant)

That's really helpful color, Fusen. Thank you. The next question I had was a follow-up on deck slide number three. Very intriguing point made with a growing pool of high-growth AI-related opportunities for the company. The question is, can you quantify what the value of those is now, either in the recently recorded Q1, what you would expect in the Q1?And as we go through 2025 and 2026, how big can those opportunities become for the business?

Fusen Chen (CEO)

Craig, you were talking about our AP, TCB?

Craig Ellis (Analyst)

Yes. And just the products that were referred to in deck slide number three, lower right, when you talked about a number of AI-related opportunities.

Fusen Chen (CEO)

Okay. So I will give you so this is our forecast. We haven't changed it. But we believe we still have upside. I think this year, when we define advanced packaging, our revenue for advanced packaging, total packaging, including multi-die chiplet, SiP, vertical wire, and TCB, right? So 2024, actually, the total AP is $220 million. And we believe 2025, we are aiming at $275 -300 million, right? And we do believe the next couple months, we might add a little bit more strong TCB forecast. After long-term forecast, we will receive from some other customers.

Craig Ellis (Analyst)

Got it. That's helpful. Thanks for the color on those items, Fusen. I'll get back in the queue.

Fusen Chen (CEO)

Okay. Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. Next question today is coming from David Duley from Steelhead Securities. Your line is now live.

David Duley (Analyst)

Yeah. Thanks for taking my questions. I got a couple. Could you just talk a little bit more about help us understand how many customers now are using your thermocompression bonding tool? You've listed, I think, an OSAT, an IDM, a foundry. I wasn't able to collect all the information. So if you could just review that again and kind of let us know which ones will be the biggest growth drivers in the near term.

Fusen Chen (CEO)

Okay. Actually, we actually have multiple customers. We have a foundry. We also have IDM. I think we are in all of OSAT. Actually, I don't have a total number.I think it will be quite significant,

David Duley (Analyst)

so I think, Dave, this is Lester. I think between customers who are using it in high-volume production, who's about to use it in volume production, plus qualifying, I think would be close to 8 to 10 customers who are looking at it or who soon receive shipments of our TCB bonders.

Lester Wong (CFO)

Okay, and then I think last conference call, I think you highlighted the thermocompression bonding opportunity in 2025, I think was $40 million. And that was part of this $220 million going to $275-300 million, I think. Could you maybe just break out the pieces of that $275-300 million amongst your advanced packaging pieces?

Fusen Chen (CEO)

Okay. Actually, I don't think I have a breakdown over here. This including, as I mentioned, this is like a multi-die chiplet, SiP, this is a flip chip, vertical wire, and TCB.But TCB alone, I think I mentioned last call. I think our 2024 is $55 million. And this quarter, I think we are aiming at $75-100 million. And the total TCB market, I think this year, for total TCB is about $300 million. $300 million. So we are probably this year. We are aiming roughly probably about 30% of our total market share. And we do believe we can grow market share from here.

David Duley (Analyst)

Okay. Thank you. And then, excuse me. As far as the vertical wire solution, would you expect to see revenue from that in 2025? And maybe help us understand if you do have revenue from how many customers?

Fusen Chen (CEO)

Okay. So I think we are very excited. Almost every memory customer, we are working with that. Also recently, including China. So all Korean and also a major U.S. IDM.We do believe this is very beneficial. A lot of the first application is going to for the LPDDR5. This is for the sale, but in the future, we believe this is a vertical wire, not only DRAM. We are also working with a NAND customer and funding actually a lot of new applications. In the future, we'll also go to a logic, right, so we are quite excited, so in terms of customer, working with a customer, with the revenue, I would say three at this moment.

At least the initial production, we do believe 2025 will be our initial production. Some of them just start to run their process, and so including NAND, including this, I think we are working probably with seven or eight customers, right, so we believe 2025, we have a low revenue, maybe I would say below 20.

And we are looking forward for 2026 to be bigger. And 2027, I think will take off to be much, much bigger. So 2026, if you want me to pick out a number, and I can give you a number, roughly say $50 million. 2026. And this year, probably below $20 million. And hopefully, this will take off after that. And we do have a strong. And I believe this will be a game changer for the next couple of years.

David Duley (Analyst)

Okay. And final question for me has to do with the dual head tool for the HBM market. I think you've maybe mentioned in the past that you need to have a higher throughput tool in this market to win business.And maybe help us understand what your throughput advantages are versus the competition, or what are some of the parameters or key metrics that will determine your success in winning business with an HBM customer?

Fusen Chen (CEO)

Well, I think the HBM. Let's take two aspects. I think we are engaging for the next generation, right? And so there are two important parts. One is really the process. We are working for the future. And our goal is targeted to ship the system end of the year. And so the process, I think, is very, very important. We do believe we are able to create a copper-to-copper. And you have so many there, I think we will provide very good electrical performance. And then, I think it's going to be the throughput and productivity.

We do believe our tool with the twin head will have an advantage or slightly better than the current competition, I think, at this moment. But we do believe the performance and reliability is what we are aiming at, and with a better productivity compared to competitor.

David Duley (Analyst)

Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. Next question is coming from Charles Shi. And Needham & Company. Your line is now live.

Charles Shi (Analyst)

Good evening, Fusen. My first question is about the TCB. This dual head system versus single head, you already shipped and qualified. I wonder when this customer goes into volume production, do you expect the volume production tool to be single head or dual head, or it's going to be a mix? And maybe a related part of this question is this shipment of the dual head system. Sounds like it's evaluation system.And if that's the case, when do you think you can get the qualification of this tool?

Fusen Chen (CEO)

So Charlie, you asked if this is an evaluation system. No, this is not an evaluation system. This is in one of the PO we have. So we do believe from one chamber to a two chamber, it will go smoothly. We believe our engineering capacity. So the tool right now is used for pilot production and also for the new customer qualification. And after maybe running a couple of months, I would say maybe three months, along that, we hope to receive a long-term just outlook, business outlook just from customers.

Charles Shi (Analyst)

Yeah. Do you think the volume production tool will be dual head or single head?

Fusen Chen (CEO)

Yeah, yes. That's correct. That's correct. I think it's going to be dual head.

Charles Shi (Analyst)

Will be dual head. Okay. Thanks.

Maybe the second question also on Fluxless TCB. I think you mentioned about the engagement with a leading memory customer on HBM. Can you provide a little bit of details on what's the engagement right now? What will be the next milestones, etc.?

Fusen Chen (CEO)

Okay. So I think the first two years, we actually are very focused on Logic, right? So I can tell you we are really. It's really for next generation HBM. And we do believe we did a successful demo. And our goal is really ship the system by the end of the year. Hopefully, if everything is successful, we can catch high-volume production probably within 18-24 months. That's really our goal.

Charles Shi (Analyst)

Got it. Okay. So lastly, a question about the VWB. Thanks for the color you provided to David earlier.I want to ask you, since DRAM wire bonding, I think traditionally it's not your market. It's a Japanese competitor who had that market. So for the top DRAM customers, what's your expected market share in VWB? Because I would assume that the incumbent will also have some solutions. And what would you believe from where you stand today, the potential market share in VWB could be?

Fusen Chen (CEO)

So sure, I don't know why you make a comment about Japanese. I think the total market shares, just all ball bonding, I think we have close to 75%-80%. And so the NAND, I think we probably have 90-some% market shares. And for the DRAM, I think DRAM in terms of ball bonding, okay, DRAM, I think at this moment, like a DDR, I would say maybe 60% is a flip chip.

Then probably ball bonding, traditional ball bonding. Actually, I would say maybe 30%-40%. I think we still have a very, very high market share. We are still number one, not only in the NAND, also in the DRAM, right? So go back to the VWB. I think the first application is going to be DDR5. And this probably can reduce total packaging form factor about 30%.So that's why it's going to be used for the cell phone. And it's kind of a replacement like a TSV process, right, with a better process yield performance and also cost. I hope I answered your questions.

Charles Shi (Analyst)

Yeah. I mean, do you expect to have a VWB position at all three leading DRAM customers a few years down the road? That's actually my question. Yeah.

Fusen Chen (CEO)

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. Yes. The answer is yes. We do expect that. Okay.

Charles Shi (Analyst)

Thanks, Fusen.

Fusen Chen (CEO)

Yeah. Thank you. Thank you, Joe. Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Next question is coming from Tom Diffely from D.A. Davidson. Your line is now live.

Tom Diffely (Analyst)

Okay. Thank you. Appreciate the chance to ask a couple of questions here. Fusen, just maybe some questions about the general semi market or the core market. What are the end markets where you're seeing the most excess capacity? Or maybe said a different way, which of the end markets do you think will recover first from a ball bonder utilization rate point of view?

Fusen Chen (CEO)

Well, I think that actually the recovery in my mind right now is both auto and also General Semiconductor is leading by China, right? So like a front-end wafer-type equipment, I think it's always in past couple years, always at a quite high level. And we do believe for the next couple of years because of advanced packaging investment.

Also, China is expanding a lot of legacy-type capacity. After they finish front-end facility, I think the back-end investment will be needed. The investment of back-end and the front-end do correlate very, very well. Actually, we can tell you, I think at this moment, what are really leading general semi and also auto, including ball bonder and also wedge bonder, right, actually is happening in China.

Tom Diffely (Analyst)

Okay. Maybe just to dig in on one piece of the market. A few of the other players in the semicap world have talked about some NAND strength recently. It sounds like it's more just kind of on the technology side.Curious if you think you're going to get a boost from that on your NAND business, or do you have to wait for true capacity buys, excess capacity, or incremental capacity to come back into the marketplace before you see a pickup in that business?

Fusen Chen (CEO)

Okay. So what I can tell you is I think NAND pretty much really is a ball bonder. And for the NAND, actually, we have if not above, we are close to 90% of the market shares for the NAND.

Tom Diffely (Analyst)

Yeah. So wondering about the health of that and if you're going to see an uptick in that over the next couple of quarters, like guys like Lam on the equipment side, or if it's going to be kind of a delayed recovery for you versus those peers.

Sometimes I think the investment are probably not in a way of coordination, right?

Fusen Chen (CEO)

So I actually didn't know which customer you refer to.

Tom Diffely (Analyst)

Yeah.

Fusen Chen (CEO)

So I think the NAND, yeah. For example, if the H Company, the NAND, many more layer, probably H development and the capacity is more important, right? And for us, you finish a product, and then it's a stacked die. Actually, we can connect a stacked die. So what I can tell you is when this finish building in the front-end, I think we will be benefited. Because the NAND package is quite simple.

Tom Diffely (Analyst)

Yep. Okay. Thanks for that, and then maybe just a quick follow-up for Lester. Lester, when you see the core markets come back in 2026 and kind of get back to that normalized level, what does that do to the margin structure, if anything? I assume that those traditional core markets might be a little lower margin than some of your newer stuff.So I was curious if there's anything we need to think about from a gross margin point of view.

Lester Wong (CFO)

Well, Tom, from a gross margin standpoint, we're still aiming towards 50%, right? And we think as we head into 2026, even our traditional core products like ball and wedge, we are introducing new products, which gives us higher margins for both ball and wedge. And also, I think we continue to focus on cost reduction, again, both in ball bonder and wedge bonder.So we think actually the margins will continue to improve as we roll into 2026. And also, obviously, with higher volume, our margins do get better because our factory utilization goes up.

Tom Diffely (Analyst)

Great. Okay. Thanks. Appreciate it.

Thank you. Next question is a follow-up from Craig Ellis from B. Riley. Your line is now live. Yeah. Thanks for sneaking in the follow-up question.

Craig Ellis (Analyst)

Fusen, I wanted to go back to some commentary around Charles' question around when we get the volume shipment intercept with high bandwidth memory on Fluxless TCB. I think you said at the end of this year that's possible. And so the question is, is the enabling development, the industry's transition to HBM4, is it as industry goes to higher stack and likely more volume 16 stack at that time, or something else that's creating that window of opportunity for you? Thank you.

Fusen Chen (CEO)

Yeah. Next generation right now is a HBM3E. So I just want to make sure we have a right expectation. Before us trying to penetrate through a DRAM market, there's already a machine provider from Korea, and also a lot of other customers.So this one, I think when we say we will ship a system, this will be actually after customer have confidence after the demonstration is good. We actually intend to ship a system maybe later part of the year. And I still need to go through a lot of development, right? So to really win the high-volume production, I think probably successful qualified probably this already big milestone, we are targeting about 18 months, right?

Craig Ellis (Analyst)

Okay. Got it. So commercial revenue really would be sometime in calendar 2026 rather than something that would be exiting 2025.

Fusen Chen (CEO)

That is quite correct. Yes.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. We've reached the end of our question and answer session. I'd like to turn the floor back over for any further closing comments.

Fusen Chen (CEO)

Thank you, Kevin. 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.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. That does conclude today's teleconference and webcast. You may disconnect your line at this time and have a wonderful day. We thank you for your participation today.