Excerpts of Q&A between shareholders of AEM and the company ahead of the AGM for FY2020. For the full Q&A that was uploaded to the SGX website, click here.
| Can the Company share the view of the semiconductor industry in terms of its growth trajectory and the challenges ahead? |
COVID-19 has accelerated global digitalization by 6-8 years, driving significant investment into digital infrastructure for Cloud, 5G, AI, Autonomous Vehicles, etc., that are powered by next-generation semiconductor devices.
We have started to see this growth in demand for advanced semiconductors and expect to see this growth in demand continue in its general trend for the foreseeable future.
On challenges, the next generation semiconductor devices will need to perform at mission critical levels that are beyond the mainly consumer grade levels that we see today.
This will be made even more challenging with the introduction of Heterogeneous Integration in advanced semiconductor packages. This will require a fundamental rethink of how devices are manufactured and a tighter integration of front-end fabrication and back-end assembly & test processes.
| What is the long-term road map for AEM in terms of technology and business? |
Due to competitive reasons, we will not divulge the details of our long-term roadmap for either our technologies or our business.
We believe that the semiconductor market is at an inflection point and will require a rethink of the traditional material flows used in today's semiconductor manufacturing processes, which will end up blurring the lines between the front-end and back-end.
We believe that AEM is uniquely poised to be able to deliver application-specific solutions at the price-point and with the lead times required to make our customers successful.
| Where is the growth potential - will AEM be able to support foundries from TSMC and Samsung? |
Today, AEM plays in the back-end test space. If and when traditional foundry players like TSMC expand into the back-end assembly and test space as a result of the unique requirements resulting from heterogeneous packaging technologies, AEM has the technology pillars and solution platforms to be able to address such customers' needs.