Taiwan-based UVAT Technology, a Foxconn affiliate dedicated to vacuum sputtering equipment and coating services, has seen growing demand for notebooks recently despite the ongoing coronavirus outbreak.
UVAT currently has plants in China's Kunshan and Chongqing and has seen increases in orders for notebook coating services since the end of February after it resumed production.
The company has also obtained orders for manufacturing vacuum sputtering equipment and will fulfill the orders at the end of April or in early May.
In 2019, UVAT had 64% of its revenues generated from its equipment business and 36% from sputtering services. Many of the company's equipment clients had first tried the sputtering services and then turned to procure equipment to do the work in house later, the company said.
Some clients would come back to use UVAT's services during peak demand when their in-house capacities are fully loaded.
UVAT had consolidated revenues of NT$92.25 million (US$3.04 million) in the first quarter of 2020, down 40.14% on year due mainly to equipment clients' deferred orders as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. The company currently has a visibility of equipment orders until the end of the second quarter and is also enjoying stable orders for the sputtering services on notebooks and 5G smartphones.
The company so far still cannot give an estimate on its second-quarter revenues as the pandemic has made it difficulty for clients to evaluate the installation of the equipment, but the company still expects its semiconductor sputtering equipment shipments to rise significantly with the product line's revenue contribution to rise from 16% in 2019 to 35-45% in 2020.
Since many smartphone vendors are expected to adopt plastic and glass materials for their devices' back covers instead of metal materials to prevent signal interruption, UVAT is also expected to benefit from related orders, said some market watchers.
Article translated by Joseph Tsai
