Welcome everyone to Chroma 2025 Second Quarter Earnings Conference Call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent background noise. After the presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session. Please follow the instructions given at the time if you would like to ask a question. For your information, a webcast replay will be available within an hour after the conference has finished. Please visit www.chroma.com.tw/investor/index under the Investor Relations section. Now, I would like to introduce the CFO, Paul Ying. Mr. Ying, please begin.
Thank you, Jason. Hi everyone. Welcome to the 2025 second quarter financial result release for Chroma ATE. Let's start with the second quarter consolidated income statement. In this page, you can see that the net sales for the second quarter is TWD 6.455 billion. It represents a 6% drop compared to the last quarter top line. But if we compare to the last year, second quarter, it's a 17% growth. Outside of the TWD 6.4 billion, 97% is coming from the testing equipment business, which is the core business of Chroma ATE. And in this sector alone, it's a 3% drop from a Q- over- Q base, and another 20% growth on a year-over-year base. And if we look at the gross profit, which is TWD 4.224 billion, it represents 65% of the gross margin, and it's a 2% increase compared to the last quarter.
It's a 29% of growth on a year-over-year basis. After deducting the OpEx, the operating income for the second quarter is TWD 2.197 billion, representing 34% compared to the net sales. On a Q- over- Q basis, it's a 2% growth. Again, compared to last year's second quarter, it's a 45% growth. This is also a very bright record that we have made, either on the gross margin or the operating income. As to the non-operating portion, which is the net profit on TWD 241 million, compared to last quarter, it's a 44% drop. Compared to the last year's second quarter, it's a 17% drop as well. Well, mainly, it's due to the foreign exchange loss, which represents approximately TWD 600 million.
It was offset by capital gain, which is one of the long-term holdings, the equity method of the investment, ADLINK. We resigned from the board. Then we classified this portion to the short-term investment, which is on the after-market value. It's also to give the Chroma and enjoy a capital gain TWD 600 million, which is offsetting to the forex loss, foreign exchange loss, which we are lucky in this portion. But again, that's mainly due to, well, this loss or not performing. So the non-operating portion, we have a drop. But if we get to the income before tax, which is TWD 2.438 billion, and it's a 6% drop compared to the last quarter, but 35% growth on a year-over-year basis.
For the net income, which is a little bit over TWD 2 billion , it represents a 7% drop compared to the last quarter and 40% growth compared to last year's second quarter. This represents a TWD 4.64 in EPS performance, which is, again, this is an 8% drop compared to last year's 39% growth on the year-over-year base. This is for the second quarter financial results. If we turn to the next page, which is the first half consolidated income statement, here you can see that for the top line of the first half of this year, it approximately is TWD 13.320 billion . Compared to last year's first half, it's a 34% growth. Again, mostly, approximately 96% of that is coming from the testing equipment business, which is another 34% growth compared to last year.
And the gross margin, we enjoy TWD 8.372 billion, represents a 63% gross margin. And compared to last year's 69%, this is also another 44% growth. And the operating income, which is TWD 4.361 billion, it represents 33% of the top line. And again, this is an 81% growth compared to last year's first half. And after deducting or adding the non-operating items and the income before tax, it's a little bit over TWD 5 billion. Compared to last year, it's a 67% growth. And for the net income, we approach to TWD 4.163 billion. It represents a 31% compared to the top line. And it's another 73% growth compared to last year's first half. And for the first half of this year, the basic earnings per share is approaching to TWD 9.67.
This is for the first half comparison of 2025 compared to 2024. Next page, we give you some highlights for the balance sheet and the financial ratio. In this page, you can see that the cash and short-term investment, which is 48% compared to last year's year-end. For the inventory, it's also another 12% of growth. For the short-term debt, it's a 76% drop. The long-term debt is a 10% growth due to the construction of our second phase of our headquarters. As to the return on equity, it's a 33% for this period compared to last year's 22%, which is another record high. For the EBITDA, you can see the first half, we presented TWD 5.460 billion. This is year-over-year 60% of growth. This is the highlights for the financial numbers.
Let's go to the highlights for the operation.
Okay.
Jennifer, you want to take it over?
Yep. Good afternoon, everyone. This is Jennifer. I will go through the product mix on the slide tonight and provide an update for each sector. I think for the second quarter only, testing instruments and ATS have given outstanding growth, presenting a 22% QoQ and a 55% YoY. The growth driver of the testing instrument and ATS continues to benefit from AI server power application demands. We expect these sectors will reach, I mean, the total sales of these sectors this year will reach the historical high, and so we're actually expecting there will be more orders to come in the second half this year, and the semiconductors in the second quarter were slightly down, about 15% QoQ. This is due to, I think, the product mix and based on the customer scheduling. So we will talk about the second half about semiconductors later.
However, the semiconductor sector still increased by 18% compared to last year. For the first half, the biggest growth still comes from our semiconductor and photonic sectors, presenting 57% compared to last year, same period. According to the current order on hand, we expect to enjoy this kind of high level of growth for the second half this year. Even though our semiconductor and photonic sectors have presented a 135% growth last year total, but I think we will continue to benefit from two major drivers to contribute to our semiconductor and photonic sectors. First one mostly comes from our metrology equipment delivery. Second, the revising of the system-level tester orders due to AI HPC chips and autonomous driving chips. However, overall, we expect the testing equipment business will have a good year of growth this year.
The other two consolidated entities will remain not very much compared to last year. This is the quickly update regarding our product mix and also some of our views in the second half. Now we move on to Q&A section.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin our question-and-answer session. If you have a question for any of today's speakers, please press star key and number one on your telephone keypad, and you will enter the queue. After you are announced, please ask your question. If you find that your question has been answered before it is your turn to speak, please press star key and number two to cancel the question. Thank you. Now, please press star one on your keypad if you would like to ask a question. Thank you. First, we'll have Kevin Wang, Mizuho, for questions. Go ahead, please, Kevin.
Thanks. Hello. Thanks for taking my question. I have a few questions. First one is regarding your second half revenue growth, as you mentioned, as semiconductor photonics revenue should be driven by metrology and also SLT. But for your total revenue, it should be higher than first half for your second half. Is that a correct assumption?
Possible. Because if we look at the whole year basis, we still think the gross result semiconductor sector will still higher than power business if you look at annual basis.
Okay. And also for your testing instrument revenue, do you have the new guidance for the full year? Because it seems even stronger than original expectation.
We don't release official financial guidance, but I think our product is able to reach a historical high. Last time was back to 2023, about TWD 8 billion. I think we can do much better than TWD 8 billion.
Okay. Much better than TWD 8 billion. And also, for your SLT and the metrology business, maybe I ask about the metrology business first. So, we will see the more meaningful revenue in the second half. And also, I believe that should be even stronger into 2026. So, this year, do you maintain the multiple billion of revenue contribution from metrology? And also, do you have a very preliminary view for 2026 metrology business contribution?
Yeah, you could say that. Because, okay, first, the metrology tool, no matter for what kind of coming advanced package, I think we definitely will have a position for each of them. And then, yeah, if you say RDL related, because we start to book this kind of metrology tool revenue from first quarter, I would say first half mostly is related. We do have some RDL, but mostly it comes from Chroma's. Okay? But RDL will start to contribute from the second half of this year. And to date, metrology tool is only one vendor, which is Chroma's. And then if you say coming up potential opportunity like the panel-level, we are mostly waiting.
Got it. And also for SLT business, because we wish you have the new SLT for the new generation of the GPU. So how should we think about that improvement of your new SLT compared with the current SLT? And also, if that's possible, we see what percentage of the ASP increase for the new one compared to the current one?
This comes with the multiple, I would say, key factors. I'm not so sure you talk about you want to point on Rubin. Rubin is under finalizing and then price discussions. If you talk about Rubin with the switching version, I think customers are planning to build up capacity next year. I can't really tell whether this year we will start with the pipeline or not. Not sure. If you look at the market today, I think from several sources pretty much confirmed for next generation, SLT will definitely move on to another different generation, which we need to have a new tool. Second, I think we do see the increasing demands and orders from system-level tester.
As we got in the beginning of the year, this year, we have roughly at that time, we have roughly 10% or 20% comes from ASIC, which is we already start to deliver to those ASIC customers from second quarter. But recently, because the biggest U.S. customers like NVIDIA and others, they continue to revise their order, mostly comes from AI and also autonomous driving. So possibly, yeah, to jump to conclusion, I would say system-level testers, if we look at today's order on hand, I would say we will revise our guidance quite a lot compared to the beginning of this year.
Got it. So you would mean the SLT should also grow strongly this year.
Yes.
You also mentioned the ASIC. So, 10%-20%, maybe that assumption would be slightly lower because the.
Because the HPC is too strong.
Yeah. Yeah. Likely too strong, right? So the percentage would be lower, but the total revenue would be stronger. So how should we think about the next year's SLT outlook from the existing largest customer and also the ASIC business?
Several signs actually indicated to us that Edge AI may come next year. We actually received other application orders. I think we pretty much could confirm on this current. We believe that there will be more order coming from those ASIC makers. Enough to talk about that Rubin is in the schedule at the moment.
Got it. Got it. Oh, yeah. The final follow-up question. So do you have any idea about the current fitting for the SLT, the time for the Rubin compared to Blackwell? Well, there are some better changes, but how should we think about that testing time? Because if compared with the Hopper, the Blackwell, we still have around two times or even higher. But how should we think about the Rubin?
I can't tell you the details back, but I can tell you Rubin is a really, really challenging version because you are actually looking at 2,000 levels. Actually, our capability can reach over 3,000 kW at the moment, 3,000 watts at the moment. So you can consider when the market gradually might be pretty much ready when the market migrates to GPU version.
Okay. Got it. Thank you.
Yeah.
Thank you. As a reminder, please press star key and number one on your keypad if you would like to ask a question. Thank you. Next one, [Yi-Jen Lai] , Macquarie. Go ahead, please.
Hi. Thank you for taking my question. First of all, congratulations on the good result. Just want to get ahead of the margin. You delivered a pretty good gross margin this quarter. I was wondering if that's mostly because of the better product mix, and how should we think about the gross margin going forward? Thank you.
For this portion, I think we still maintain the expectation that, well, we're not expecting that every quarter we can reach this kind of record high. But again, I think if you take that as an average for the past few quarters, I think that's somewhere that we are still trying to maintain the stability of the gross margin in management. Thank you.
I see. Thank you. And then going forward to the operating expense, because you deliver a pretty good operating profit, how should we think about that, the operating profit margin in going forward as well?
Yes, definitely. I think the equation is quite simple that if we can grow the top line and maintain a stable gross margin, the OpEx normally becoming something like a fifth, so it will definitely improve the operating margin.
I see. Thank you. Just one final question about the capital gain that you mentioned earlier. May I understand how was it accounted for in the profit and loss?
Again, just like I said, I think this is a reclassification of the investment and then turns to the capital gain due to the transfer from long-term investment to a short-term financial asset. So we have to mark to market the stock price for the designated investment, which is ADLINK. It's a public company in Taiwan. We used to be sitting on the board so that we have to classify it as long-term. This year, I think early this year, they have a re-election, and we resigned from the board.
It's actually equity method to cost method . You go back to cost method investments. And then according to cost method investments, you need to try to match markets. And since we invest in ADLINK for so many years before, so of course, our cost is much lower.
I see. I see. Got it. Thank you. That'll be the end of my questions. Thank you.
Thank you.
We are now in question-and-answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star key and number one on your keypad. Thank you. Next one, Alex Wang Bernstein. Go ahead, please.
Hey, everyone. First of all, congrats on the great results. I have a few questions. First of all, about the gross margin, I'm wondering in the second quarter, is there any impact from the FX? So if we remove that impact, the gross margin will actually be much better.
Yeah. Maybe we'll put it another way, is this Gross Margin already reflects the impact from the currency.
So there is a few percentage impact from currency?
Yeah. You can consider it this way.
I see. So okay. That is really strong. Okay. That's the gross margin. And then follow-up on the SLT. In your slide, you have a few new models like SLT 30-60 and 30-100 HD. So any one of these is for Rubin?
I can't tell you.
Okay. No problem.
I think the chart we list there is we want to demonstrate one thing. Okay. As you could see these days, AI and/or HPC has a chip. The die size could get bigger no matter you talk about chiplets or the big die model like a pin count number like NVIDIA, and I think our strength is we're able to reach out to multi-die. Even the current version, if you talk about GB series, we can process like a kind of die to over 20 die, depends on the spec, and the next model we just demonstrate here is we can reach out to more 20, I would say more than 20 dies to even up to 50 dies depends on customer's design, and which is pretty much fitting to the next year. We have seen that Edge AI is about to come.
So I think this is, I think, the message we would like to deliver.
I see. So I think you were talking about model 30 to 100. I see there's like 40, 54, five. Meaning that the throughput in this new model will be higher than in the old model.
Yeah. And also you could see that there's a model above that is we also can reach out to over 2,000 watts, which is fitting for Rubin design. And which I just mentioned previously. So someone questions, we currently also can demo up to over 3,000 watts and pretty much fit it to the pipeline, which you can foresee the GPU versions.
I see. So if the throughput is higher, how about the testing time? In the past, it's like one to two hours. Are we going to see higher testing time without accounting the burning test?
Okay. We can't give you a conclusion today. We already comment about the patterns increasing the cycle time, which is GB series is about, I would say, one to two hours. Okay. And we are discussing the Rubin's pricing at the moment. And then you need to finish the parallel to be conclude what kind of cycle time. But probably we mentioned that before, system-level tester, the starting time's half an hour. You never see they go back to less than half an hour. Even if you want to test gaming, you still need to start off, jump off on half an hour. Okay. So we will have more clear picture for coming. But I can tell you Rubin is very, very challenging versions. First, this is combined with the transceiver. And second, this is actually reach up to 2,000 watts.
I see. And one last question about the SLT. Can I assume the SLT for ASIC chip is in a lower spec versus Blackwell because their thermal design power is lower?
Yes. Because ASIC, I have no idea why market wants to mix up ASIC with HPC. I believe that for us, it's really, really different spec. Okay. I think ASIC, what they target is HAI, which is actually low power consumption. And then maybe it's not that complicated. But because ASIC, they can learn from those HPC, they knew they're probably facing those physical bugs in the future. So that's why it seems like three or five years ago, they gradually adopt system-level testers.
I see. My last question is about data center ATS testers. I think last time you mentioned that you see a very strong demand coming from power server ATS. And you said the mix of 5G and data center as percentage of ATS will go to like 40%. Any update on that?
Then I think we could echo into Delta.
Okay. Fair enough.
Sort of role model.
Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's a good answer. Thank you. Congrats.
Thank you.
Thank you. To ask a question, please press star key and number one on your telephone keypad. Thank you. Okay. There are currently no questions, and then there will be the end of this conference. We thank you very much for your participation in Chroma's conference. There will be a webcast replay within an hour. Please visit www.chroma.com.tw/investor/index under the investor relations section. You may now to.