① As global demand for generative AI applications continues to grow, Japanese chip equipment giant Tokyo Electronics said it expects revenue growth of 20% for the fiscal year ending March next year.
② Tokyo Electronics revealed that due to rising demand for HBM and DDR5 chips, sales of devices related to cutting-edge DRAM memory will “increase dramatically”; however, market demand for NAND memory chips is still weak.
As global demand for generative AI applications continues to grow, global chipmakers will continue to invest in advanced technology devices.
Chip equipment giant Tokyo Electronics, one of the Japanese stock “Seven Samurai,” recently stated that it expects revenue growth of 20% for the new fiscal year ending March next year.
The Japanese stock “Seven Samurai” is similar to the “Big Seven” in the US stock market. It refers to the seven giant companies that led the rise of Japanese stocks in the early stages.
Demand for AI continues to be hot
Hiroshi Kawamoto, chief financial officer of Tokyo Electronics, said at an online press conference: “We are seeing a recovery and expansion of investments related to advanced logic and memory chips.” This may reflect the market's continued demand for artificial intelligence chips.
A person related to Tokyo Electronics also said at the press conference: “Market demand for cutting-edge logic chips is recovering, including increasing investment in 2nm test production lines or 3nm mass production lines.”
Currently, TSMC, Samsung Electronics, and Intel have all announced plans to produce 2nm chips by 2025. As an upstream provider of chip manufacturing equipment, Tokyo Electronics can clearly benefit from this.
Tokyo Electronics senior officials also said that sales of devices related to cutting-edge DRAM memory will “increase significantly” due to rising demand for HBM and DDR5 chips.
Tokyo Electronics predicts that in the new fiscal year ending March 2025, the company's revenue will increase 20% to 2.2 trillion yen (approximately RMB 102.183 billion), and operating profit is expected to increase 27.6% to 582 billion yen (approximately RMB 27.032 billion).
Demand for NAND chips is still weak
However, despite strong demand for AI chips, the future of NAND memory chips, which are widely used for data storage in smartphones and personal computers, is a completely different scene.
Tokyo Electronics said that the semiconductor industry's demand for NAND memory chips has a “weak foundation,” and currently the company does not expect customers to invest too much in this area. Tokyo Electronics said it is expected that there will be more demand for NAND chips next year.
Furthermore, for major Japanese chip equipment manufacturers such as Tokyo Electronics, demand in the Chinese market is also one of the main concerns of the outside world. Tokyo Electronics said that China currently accounts for about 40% of its total revenue, but this figure is likely to decline in the next few years as sales related to advanced chip technology expand.
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