KYEC to see 20% more IC testing orders from Nvidia, Intel in 2018

IC testing specialist King Yuan Electronics (KYEC) is expected to see its orders from both Nvidia and Intel increase by more than 20% in 2018, as Nvidia is aggressively proceeding with more AI chips deployments and Intel is seen to intensify its cooperation with KYEC to consolidate its global market share for smartphone chips, according to industry sources.

KYEC, contracted to conduct final test of Nvidia GPU chips, is expected to benefit from the growing application of such chips to in-vehicle entertainment systems, industrial PCs and other in-car AI computing segments, which Nvidia is actively developing beyond the application to gaming PCs. In 2018, KYEC is expected to see additional orders for testing thousands of Volta-architecture GPU chips per month, which feature quite complicated designs and require longer testing time, the sources said.

Though demand from the gaming market is declining from the peak of the year, demand for car-use GPU chips is expected to trend upward for a while, allowing KYEC to capture 20-30% more orders from Nvidia in 2018, the sources said.

Meanwhile, the sources added that after the smartphone chips market becomes clearer in the first quarter of 2018, KYEC is very likely to see a 20% increase in chip testing orders from Intel in the second and third quarters next year, as Intel is reportedly to garner more orders for baseband modem chips needed for Apple's iPhone devices.

KYEC has reported consolidated revenues of NT$5.172 billion (US$173 million) for the third quarter of 2017, surging 6.82% sequentially but declining 4.76% on year, with net profits up 11.34% on quarter but down 25.3% to NT$655 million for an EPS of NT$0.55. The firm's revenues for the first nine months of the year edged up 0.25% on year to NT$14.884 billion, with a net EPS of NT$1.53, compared to the corresponding figure of NT$2 seen a year earlier, according to company sources.