① The stock price of Japanese semiconductor packaging company Towa has quadrupled in a year; ② The company's unique packaging technology is a key step in the chip manufacturing process. SK Hynix, Samsung Electronics, and Micron are all its customers; ③ data shows that Towa accounts for two-thirds of the global chip molding equipment market.
Finance Association, April 8 (Editor Zhou Ziyi) Artificial intelligence has driven a wave of “core” development, and the market's demand for high-bandwidth memory chips is currently booming. Among the many beneficiaries, a semiconductor packaging company headquartered in Kyoto, Japan, whose stock price has nearly quadrupled in a year, the company controls a small but critical part of the chip manufacturing process.
$Towa (6315.JP)$The company's chip molding technology is a critical step in the chip manufacturing process. Towa holds a patent for a technology that immerses grains (die) into resin. The technology uses resin to encapsulate the grains and wires to protect them from dust, moisture, and external forces, so they can be safely stacked together, providing the GPU with greater capabilities and better training artificial intelligence.
The company praised the technology, which used less material, had a thinner package, and produced fewer defects.
According to data from research firm TechInsights, Towa holds two-thirds of the global chip molding equipment market. Its competitors include Apic Yamada, headquartered in Nagano, Japan, and ASMPT Group in Singapore, but Towa is unique in compression molding.
Towa's current stock price is five times that of a year ago, as demand for high-performance chips is driving more complex semiconductor designs. At the close of trading on Friday, the company's stock price rose 7.22% to 10,400 yen. Compared with a year ago, the company's stock price has increased by more than 400% cumulatively.
Technology is the only company
Currently, several of the largest high-bandwidth memory chip makers on the market, such as SK Hynix, Samsung Electronics, and Micron Technology, are buying Towa's compression molding machines, which has also contributed to Towa's leading edge in the chip field.
According to statistics, since last summer, SK Hynix and Samsung have ordered a total of 22 TOWA machines, each at a cost of about 300 million yen (2 million US dollars), and some of them have gross margins of more than 50%.
Hirokazu Okada, president of Towa, stated in an interview, “Our customers say they can't produce high-end chips, especially for generative artificial intelligence, without our technology.” He also revealed that the company has almost 100% of the market share in high-end chip forming machines.
He predicted, “Full production of high-bandwidth memory chips is expected to begin next year, so we're just getting started.”
Currently, Towa is also preparing its next product, which aims to cut costs in half and double the processing speed. Okada notes that the development of the new machine is almost complete, customers will soon be able to test its capabilities, and large-scale production will begin in 2028.
Mitsuhiro Osawa of the Ichiyoshi Research Institute pointed out that other companies have tried to develop competing technologies, but Towa holds key patents and has deep ties with major customers, making it difficult to surpass it in the short term.
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