Automated optical inspection (AOI) equipment specialist Machvision saw its consolidated revenues for February 2019 increase 14.2% on year and 2.9% sequentially to NT$212 million (US$6.87 million), bucking traditional seasonal trends.
The company attributed the encouraging February revenue performance partly to its successful development of PCB markets beyond the Greater China region and partly to rollout of new product lines.
Machvision enjoys clear order visibility for the first half of 2019, and expects its monthly revenues to keep surging on year in the remaining months of the year, seeking to have its annual revenues hit a new high again.
In 2019, the company will see the largest growth momentum coming from sales of FPCB assembly AOI equipment as well as IC substrate routing, appearance and blind-hole AOI equipment. In addition, COF (chip on film) packaging AOI system is expected to double its revenue contribution ratio for Machvision, and the company is also expected to stay as the No. 2 supplier of wafer AOI in terms of market share.
In terms of new products, Machvision has landed small-volume orders for FPCB assembly AVI systems from China clients. It is undertaking trial inspection of smart camera modules and will kick off shipments of related AOI systems in the third quarter of 2019.
Industry sources said that FPCB maker Career Technology has suspended placing orders with Machvision for inspection equipment for processing antenna-use LCP (liquid crystal polymer) boards due to poor demand for such boards, a move likely to affect Machvision's 2019 revenues as Career orders contributed over 10% to the firm's 2018 revenues.
In response, Machvision stressed that it still has many FPCB clients who are larger than Career in business scale and therefore the order gap can be well filled up.
Article translated by Willis Ke
