Good afternoon. First, I'll present a summary of the financial results for this period, as shown on slide three of the presentation.
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We are pleased to report that our Q3 results exceeded our internal projections set in October, delivering a new record for quarterly sales. Thanks to demand pull-in for SoC and memory test systems serving AI-related applications, the temporary digestion we had anticipated did not occur, resulting in stronger than expected top-line performance.
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Q3 operating income and net income also outperformed projections, supported by product mix improvement and only moderate increases in SG&A.
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Given this solid performance through the first nine months period and solid visibility into Q4, we are raising our full year FY 2025 guidance as follows: Sales of JPY 1.07 trillion, operating income of JPY 454 billion, net income of JPY 328.5 billion, and EPS of JPY 452.34.
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Looking ahead, with AI-related demand remaining strong, we anticipate sustained growth in the tester market in calendar year 2026.
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We continue to advance our capacity expansion initiatives to meet robust demand and are executing strategic priorities outlined in our midterm plan to evolve into an integrated test solutions provider. Through growth investments, particularly in strengthening our R&D capabilities, we are positioning the company for continued long-term leadership.
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Next, I will walk you through the business environment surrounding our company and the outlook for the tester market, as shown on slide 12.
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Before providing a tester market size update, I would like to first address our view of the business environment. While uncertainty lingers due to ongoing geopolitical risks and the possible risk of sharp exchange rate fluctuations, AI applications continue to be the main growth driver of the semiconductor market amid a rapidly and dynamically evolving AI market.
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For calendar year 2026, we estimate a SoC tester market size of $8.5 billion - $9.5 billion, representing year-on-year growth of approximately 30% at the midpoint. Growth is expected to be fueled primarily by continued momentum in AI applications, boosting unit volumes, and greater device complexity, both of which drive stronger SoC tester demand.
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For memory testers, we estimate its calendar year 2026 market size to be $2.2 billion - $2.7 billion, which represents year-on-year growth of approximately 20% at the midpoint. We expect continued solid investment appetite for testers across a broad range of memory devices.
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Thank you.
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Thank you very much, Doug.
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I would like to start the question-and-answer session.
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Mr. Yoshida of CLSA Securities Japan. Go ahead please.
[Foreign language] from CLSA. Congratulations on the very strong results and also the guidance. Could you please provide a bit more detail of the breakdown of the SoC tester market TAM? For example, for the exposure to AI area comparing to 2025 and 2026. Can we expect all the growth is just from AI towards 2026? And also is this AI demand can be broken down to the volume contribution and also the intensity, the test hour contribution. And additionally, I also like to ask you about your market share assumptions in 2025 and 2026. Thank you.
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OK, thank you for the question. Yoshida-san, this is Doug. First of all from an SoC perspective, we continue to see the largest sub segment obviously to be in the high performance compute or AI area roughly and 25%. We see that as around 80% of our SoC business and we see that continuing into 2026. That is, I said in my prepared remarks, will continue to be the main driver from a test content or test intensity perspective. We continue to see the complexities drive more test insertions and higher test time. We see that trend continuing.
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Finally, on the market share part of your question, we will release the final calendar year 2025 market share information in April. But I can say in broad strokes that we do believe we picked up a fairly substantial market share in SoC, and we see that trend continuing into 2026 as well.
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Thank you.
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Thank you very much, Mr. Yoshida.
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Next, Mr. Yamamoto, Mizuho Securities, Yamamoto-san please。
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You mentioned that for a SoC business 80%, around 80%, comes from HPC/AI related business and I'm wondering if you could break it down further between GPU versus ASIC for 2025 and also if you could share your outlook toward 2026 would be appreciated.
Okay. Yeah. Thank you, Yamamoto-san. This is Doug again. We don't disclose beyond just the categories with the computing and communication. So that basically, the 80% really is inclusive of the high performance compute, you know, the AI accelerators plus most typically the application processors. I think it's fairly obvious that the majority of that is in the HPC side of things right now, and we see that continuing.
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And then, you know, as to the GPU, ASIC part of your question, I'm actually going to ask Sanjeev to answer that part of the question.
This is Sanjeev Mohan. Thank you for your question. As Doug mentioned, our market share is very strong, and we believe it's continuing to grow. In FY 2025, there was clearly a shift more towards custom ASICs. Obviously because of our market share and presence, our business with those customers also grew. But having said that, GPU continues to be very strong and still the number one driver for the business. As far as the forecast is concerned, we expect that trend to continue. We will see more business with custom ASIC providers, but the GPU business should remain very healthy. I think that's to the extent that I would comment at this point.
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Thank you very much, Mr. Yamamoto.
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So next, Mr. Wadaki of Morgan Stanley MUFG. Wadaki-san, go ahead, please.
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Well, you announce strong earnings every quarter, and I'm surprised each time. My question is somewhat similar. So you mentioned that TAM for 2026 will grow by about 30%. And just want to understand how the reasons can be broken down. Let's say, the three factors, GPU test time, growth of ASIC, custom ASIC business, and volume growth. So if you have these three breakdowns, how would you rank the contributions for potential TAM growth for 2026?
Thank you, Wadaki-san. I think the biggest driver is just going to be the additional unit volumes for the custom ASIC. We've said before that the test content between, you know, sort of the typical custom ASIC architecture is very similar to that of the GPU accelerator products. So they also have a lot of test content, but in terms of what's driving the trajectory is really the unit volume and the more adoption of the custom silicon versus traditional GPU.
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Thank you.
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Thank you very much, Mr. Wadaki.
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Next, Mr. Nakamura of Goldman Sachs, Japan. Go ahead, please.
Thank you very much and congratulations once again on the strong results. I just wanted to also ask about your calendar 2026 market outlook for both SoC and memory. What kind of scenarios are you assuming for both the low end and also the high end of your guidance for both SoC and memory? It looks like the strength will continue, especially on the AI side, for a while. So based on the conversations that you're having with your customers, is there any visibility that you can discuss on calendar 2027 and beyond?
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Okay. Thank you, Nakamura-san. This is Doug. Starting with the SoC market, on the demand side, it's very strong. When we look at the assumptions on the low and high side, a lot of that is driven by the sheer supply side economics. I would say that from wafer starts to CoWoS capacity to memory availability is really going to dictate the low and high range. It's a little bit out of the control of our company. So long as there's enough wafers and advanced packaging and memory, there could be a scenario at the higher end of that. Sorry. Yeah. Pause for translators.
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On the memory side, it's a little bit different. It's still going to be supply related in terms of how much memory can be supplied. But in this case, there are new factories, as you know, being built by all of the DRAM suppliers, and those are coming online later in 2027 and into 2028. Until that time, there's a lot of just reshuffling of wafer starts, reallocation towards the AI market. So depending upon how well the memory suppliers are able to optimize those wafer starts toward the high-end areas, that's going to really dictate where we wind up in this range.
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Thank you very much. Is there any visibility into calendar 2027 and beyond?
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Yeah, I mean, it's too early, but kind of in general thinking, a lot of the customers have, as you know, talked about being sold out all the way through this year and into next year. So that bodes well for the test capacity that they'll need. Coupling that with increasing complexity, you know, year after year, that also bodes well for twenty-seven. But, you know, a little too early to say at this point, Nakamura-san.
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Thank you very much.
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Thank you very much, Mr. Nakamura.
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Next, Mr. Hirakawa of BofA Securities. Go ahead, please.
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My question has to do with tester production capacity. I think originally your comment was that toward the end of FY 2026, the year ending March 2027, you would aim for capacity increase of between 60% to 70% versus 2025. I think that the number, the unit number that you gave out in November last year was 5,000 units. Hearing you speak about TAM today for 2026, which suggests almost like doubling pace, and just doing the math of market share, which could reach high 60%, in 2025. I think that 5,000 units won't be sufficient. What's your current thoughts on capacity? And also, where are you currently in terms of the capacity ramp? Where do you think you'll be at the end of March? Do you think that you'll be running at full utilization or full capacity?
Thank you, Hirakawa-san. Yeah, very good question. I think we recently held the fireside chat, and I mentioned that we were going to target capacity of at least 5,000 systems by the end of our fiscal year 2026. We're definitely on track for that and actually now are looking at expanding that even further because of some of the demand that we showed in the TAM that you recognized. So we said at least 5,000, meaning that would be the low minimum area. We have the scalability to go beyond that certainly. We also mentioned that we were going to then take a step towards 7,500 systems within a couple of years, and then beyond that to 10,000. So we may be in the position to have to accelerate that build out faster than we had originally planned. But that's just a matter of executing faster than we had anticipated.
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Thank you very much.
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Thank you very much. Next question is from Mr. Shimamoto of Okasan Securities.
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Well, so my question has to do with your outlook for FY 2026. The period that will end in March 2027. The TAM figure that you disclosed actually suggest that FY 2026 revenue could grow between 30% to 40% year over year. Is my assumption correct? Is there a possibility that you could actually beat this, you know, grow even higher and you give an MTP update before. But I think it might be likely that your FY 2026 could outperform your revised MTP figures. So I want to know what's happened like in the last three months. What's changed? What's different?
OK, thank you, Shimamoto-san. So obviously we don't do any FY 2026 guidance until April. But certainly looking at our TAM projections and, you know, using assumptions around market share, there is a case where there could be that kind of growth, which actually is in line with many other companies who are projecting into 2026 right now.
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And then as for the midterm plan, yes, certainly we're surpassing lots of the goals we had set for the three years. And you know, we'll be revisiting those numbers as we go into fiscal 2026, which will be the final year of our third midterm plan. So please wait for that.
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And then for the final part about what's really changed the last quarter, I'm going to ask Sanjeev to comment on that.
Yeah, I think that's a really good question. I think first of all, in the last three months, what we saw was a lot of pull ins from customers in terms of their devices coming and ramping more quickly than we had thought. So some of the digestion period and the new product launches that we thought would happen early this year, they were actually pulled in. So I think that was one of the big factors as we look at the next year. We talked about this a little bit earlier. I think we can really point to the growth in custom ASICs as being one of the big reasons. In 2025, there were a lot of new designs that were being launched, and now it seems that in 2026, they're going to be moving into high volume manufacturing, and that is going to directly contribute to our business.
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[Foreign language]. Thank you very much.
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Thank you very much, Mr. 島本, for your question.
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Next, Mr. Shibano from Citigroup Global Markets Japan. Go ahead, please.
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I think the second half performance beat your original expectation three months ago, not just third quarter, but fourth quarter will probably beat your prior assumptions. Is it mainly GPU driven? Or is it the case that custom ASIC has already contributed to your better than expected performance in Q3 and beyond?
This is Sanjeev again. It's many factors. We were able to expand our production capacity much sooner than we thought. That was one of the big reasons, and we were able to resolve some of the constraints. Beyond that, the business across the board is strong. It's not just one application that I can point to and say, this is what led to the second half beat. The whole high performance compute market, whether it's GPUs or custom ASICs or inferencing devices, they're all doing very, very well. Given our market position, we benefited from the growth.
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Thank you very much, Mr. Shibano.
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安井 of UBS Securities, please.
My question is about China. You are talking about the very strong demand on the pulling demand in December, December quarter and the China revenue went up nicely. So you've been talking about very strong demand, customer demand. Does it include China, the customer? And then what is the outlook for the 2026 China demand for SoC? That's my question. Thank you.
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Yeah, thank you for the question, 寿井さん. Yeah, China business remains quite healthy around 20%-25% of the overall revenue. It's an important region for us both on the SoC side as well as memory. Without getting into specific segments, I'll just say that it has a very robust fabless community in China. So there's literally thousands of fabless companies and we're leveraging our platform strategy on the 93K, which has served that market very well, and has led to some of the good revenue figures that you're seeing.
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Thank you very much. On a little bit. The follow up question. That's the mean like 2026 demand includes the AI customer in China. It's going to be expanded into the 2026? That's my last question. Thank you.
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I think for that part, I think the most we could say is that there is a variety of device segments in the SoC side in China, so they serve everything from the consumer electronics and mobility and high performance compute. So that's all baked in also into our overall global TAM numbers. But nothing out of the ordinary when it comes to China.
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Thank you very much.
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Thank you very much, Mr. Yasui for your question.
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Although we have received additional questions, I would like to now conclude today's session.
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Thank you very much for taking your time to join us in our financial briefing, despite your very busy schedule today.