Display equipment manufacturer Avaco on Thursday said it was conducting a reliability review on its semiconductor packaging sputter with a semiconductor company.
The company is hoping sales from the supply of the sputters will occur this year
Avaco is pushing metal layer deposition sputter, used for wafer level packaging, and an optical inspection equipment.
The company singed a strategic collaboration agreement with a foreign semiconductor sputter company in 2019. Last year, he entered a similar partnership with a foreign optical inspection equipment maker.
Avaco is also attempting to expand into equipment for the production of multi layer ceramic capacitors (MLCC) and lithium-ion batteries.
Last year, the company wrapped up reliability review for its production equipment for MLCC used in IT applications. Last year in September, the firm formed a converting machine division, which has been designing roll-to-roll equipment used in battery production.
Avaco’s long-term goal is to have semiconductor production equipment account for up to half of its sales. Display equipment currently accounts for 80% of its sales.
Out of its total sales in 2020 of 199.8 billion won, OLED equipment accounted for 57.2% of the sales, followed by those for liquid crystal display (LCD) at 25.1%.
The company is looking for new revenue streams as its current main customer, LG Display, is reducing its spending. While Avaco has increased supply to Chinese panel makers as well, they are insufficient to fill the sales vacuum left by LG.
In 2018, Avaco had 205.4 billion won worth of remaining orders. This has fallen to 183.9 billion won in 2019 and 129.6 billion won in 2020. Out of those orders, vacuum equipment __ such as sputters __ accounted for 193.9 billion won in 2018. But this has fallen to 117.3 billion won in 2019 and 58.4 billion won in 2020. Orders for module equipment also fell from 74.9 billion won in 2018 to 49.9 billion won in 2019 and 39.6 billion won in 2020.
In 2018, it had won 241.6 billion won worth of orders from LG Display and LG Electronics. This has fallen to 113.6 billion won in 2019 and 49.9 billion won in 2020.
Last year, the company won 30.3 won worth of orders from CSOT and another 9.1 billion won from BOE. In 2019, he won 11.4 billion won worth of orders from LG Energy Soluion. This increased to 17.6 billion won in 2020.
Avaco last year recorded 199.8 billion won in sales and 23.6 billion won in operating income. It had an operating margin rate of 11.8%. Sales dropped 11.1% from 2019 but operating income increased 0.9%.