Packaging and testing house Advanced Semiconductor Engineering (ASE) will expand 2012 capital expenditure (capex) from US$700-750 million originally to US$800 million mainly due to expected increases in orders from IDMs, company CFO Joseph Tung told at an April 27 investors conference.
The hiked capex will consist of US$400 million for copper wire-bonding capacity, US$200 million for bumping and flip chip capacity and US$200 million for testing capacity, Tung indicated.
With capex of US$156 million for the first quarter, ASE plans to spend more than US$300 million in the second quarter, Tung said.
ASE's utilization for bumping and wire-bonding stood at nearly 100% and 75% respectively in the first quarter of 2012 and the company expects both segments to reach fully utilization in the second quarter, Tung indicated.
ASE generated revenues of NT$29.236 billion (US$989 million) from ATM (assembly, testing and materials) business operation in the first quarter, dropping by 8.37% sequentially and by 5.32% on year. The ATM revenues consisted of NT$23.531 billion from IC packaging operation, NT$5.077 billion from IC testing operation, NT$13.889 billion from EMS operation and NT$553 million from sales of substrates to third parties.
In terms of applications, 51% of ATM revenues came from communication products, 37% from automotive and consumer products and 11% from PC products.
Among different markets, 58% of ATM revenues came from North America, 11% from Europe, 19% from Taiwan, 5% from Japan and 7% from other Asian countries.
| ASE: Financial results, 1Q12 (NT$b) | |||
| Item | 1Q12 | Q/Q | Y/Y |
| Consolidated revenues | 43.101 | (7.09%) | (6.31%) |
| Gross margin | 16.68% | (1.59pp) | (2.14pp) |
| Net operating profit | 2.846 | (18.71%) | (35.13%) |
| Net profit | 2.056 | (22.09%) | (`48.26%) |
| Net EPS (NT$) | 0.31 |
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Source: Company, compiled by Digitimes, April 2012
ASE CFO Joseph Tung
Photo: Michael Lee, Digitimes, April 2012
Article translated by Adam Hwang
