Thank you very much for joining Advantest Corporation's IR fireside chat despite your busy schedule. We are excited to present this session and would like to introduce our panelists and our moderator. From the left side of the slide, Mr. Douglas Lefever, Representative Director, Senior Executive Officer, and Group CEO; Mr. Jürgen Zeller, Senior Executive Officer and Chief Technology Officer; Mr. Yasuo Mihashi, Senior Executive Officer and Chief Stakeholder Relations Officer. Mr. Mihashi will serve as the moderator for today's fireside chat session. I am Oike from the IR department, and I will be serving as your facilitator today. The theme of the discussion is "Be the most trusted and value-tested solution company in the semiconductor value chain." This is Advantest's vision statement, which we defined last year. Following the fireside chat, we will open the floor for questions from the audience.
We plan to close this session at 6:00 P.M. Japan time. Before we begin, we would like to remind you that today's session contains forward-looking statements, all of which are subject to risks and uncertainties that may cause our actual results to be different from those in such forward-looking statements.
Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening. Thank you for joining Advantest fireside chat today. Let me introduce our CEO, Douglas Lefever, sitting beside me, and also CTO, Jürgen Zeller. We will conduct today's fireside chat with all of us.
Yeah, thank you, Yas. Great to be here. We're in a beautiful setting today. It's autumn here in Germany, and we're in the Mercedes-Benz area where many things started in the automotive industry. I came from a family in the automotive industry, not in Germany, but in the Detroit area. That's how I started my career, but I quickly moved to semiconductors and have been in that industry now for 27 or 28 years, so happy to be here.
Hello, I'm Jürgen. Jürgen, probably the first site of Hewlett-Packard outside of the United States. I've now been 34 years in the ATE industry: Hewlett-Packard, Agilent, Verigy, and since 2011 with Advantest. Yes, I'm happy that now the entire team is here in Böblingen, and we can show everything we are doing.
Let me start by touching on our MKP3, I think. It has been one and a half years since we initiated this midterm round three. I think maybe we should start by highlighting MKP3. We still have one and a half years more, and we will focus on expanding or extending our businesses there.
Yeah, I can start, Yas. Maybe before we even talk about the midterm plan three, we can go back a couple of years further. When we started discussing midterm management plans, we did that around 2017 when Yoshida-san became CEO. We implemented these three-year management plans, realizing that we needed to plan not just one year out, but take into account all the cycle effects. We started putting strategies in place along with key performance indicators to measure ourselves over a three-year period rather than single years. We did that from 2018 to 2020, then 2021 to 2023, and now we're in our third three-year tranche, halfway through it. Each of those plans has been very successful. I think we've built new strategies upon ones that are still core to our success.
As we look into the second half of this third plan, we're doing a lot of things right. I think the company has executed in a way that management really expected, and we've been able to grow from plan to plan at a very high rate. Looking into this third plan, a couple of the themes that we're having to adapt to even more are around the concept of velocity and scale. In our industry, the time-to-market aspect is becoming increasingly critical. Device generations are now at a cadence of one year, as opposed to a couple of years or even longer in some cases in the past. We're having to shorten our development cycles. I'm sure Jürgen can speak to that.
We're also having to scale out our production to a level we never assumed in previous plans. We've done a good job, I think, in the first part of this midterm plan. In the second half, there will be much more scaling, investing in our supply chain and production capacity. As we reported in our last disclosure, we've increased the full-year numbers and have significantly updated the three-year plan numbers. That's a result of the growth we're experiencing along with our ability to respond to it.
I see. As we do many things, it could extend our business position to success, I think. Our success comes from its complexities. That is what we are talking about in the market, I think. Jürgen, what can you say about these complexities?
It's a complex question.
Correct.
The AI market is enormously driven by performance and power. Our customers are pushing all technologies to the limits, whether that's high-bandwidth memory, now becoming very fast with more stacks, whether that's the I/O speed going to 224 gigabit, moving to optical integration, whether it's new process technology, or 3.5D packaging technology. This is all stacking up and, combined with what Doug said the velocity, time-to-market pressure, and increased quality levels it generates an enormous test challenge, or industry challenge. We call it an industry problem. That is where we are focusing and investing to resolve it.
Testing Testing has traditionally been seen as a cost because we need to judge whether the device is okay or not. But now, testing is becoming something different. I think we are demonstrating more value than traditional testing. Will this trend continue for at least the next few years?
Yeah, I’m very sure, because the technology we use always pushes to the edge. Our job, in the meantime, is not just a go/no-go decision; we have to trim and calibrate every device, sometimes even subsections of a device, to its optimal performance point, ensuring enough margins for each circuit. This is something we have been doing for many years, and we will continue to trim and calibrate to make devices better. It’s a necessary step.
Yeah, I agree with Jürgen. The equation has changed with these very complex high-performance compute AI devices and the packaging technology. The cost of that packaging now drives a focus on yield and quality. This aspect has always existed, but now these devices have such high ASPs and are so costly in terms of packaging that the test content naturally increases to ensure high-yield devices. It’s just too expensive to discard these expensive packages.
Another example is power pairing. Process variation is significant, and everyone wants to squeeze out the last bit of power. People want to pair chiplets for the best power combination. That’s where we help. This is one of the areas where we excel in providing data to optimize yield and performance levels.
It really good for us that testing is becoming so valuable in producing very complicated devices, including miniaturization and heterogeneously integrated technologies. Meanwhile, efficiency is always required. How do we approach efficiency gains with such a complicated testing philosophy and methodologies in the future?
Let’s start with a couple of things. First, we are convinced that testing must extend towards design because that’s where the DFTs are set. This is part of the reason we developed our new initiative/product called Cyclonic, which helps close the gap between EDA and ATE to ensure good sign-off. It also allows designers to communicate with test engineers, who can feedback results more effectively, closing the loop. Second, we invest heavily in automation tools, ATE software, and AI tools to make our users more productive. Third, which we call the distribution of tests: sometimes our customers don’t know where to place test content or what content to add.
Therefore, we have a strategy to allow the distribution of tests across all test insertions, whether that’s engineering, wafer sort, hot/cold, package test, burn-in, or system-level tests. These are just a few highlights.
Yeah, the other thing to add is I think in the previous midterm plans, we've done a good job of adding some of those pieces in that back-end flow. To Jürgen's point, as the distribution of tests moves around depending upon the type of device or where it is in its life cycle, our approach is being able to cover those different insertions. I can remember actually just going back to the 2017 time frame, I still have a picture of the whiteboard that we made of this kind of moving to the left and integrating EDA to HE and going right with system level test and having cloud-based data analytics to tie them together. That was all the way back now eight or nine years ago. Throughout that first and second plan, we've made some inorganic moves and acquisitions.
We've also done organic development on things like die-level probes. Now we’re integrating these elements, and we’re seeing the effects of these investments and strategies.
Yeah. indeed, we are making good progress. My next question is: since we are doing well, we must also consider hidden risks so that we can plan for potential risk factors affecting company growth or strategy. Doug, where do you see risks we should consider? Increasing production capacity is one of the biggest risks we are addressing. What other risks exist?
Yeah, I get this question a lot. Because everyone wants to talk about bubble and what happens in a downturn. I think for one thing, I believe this is different. In some ways, it's just a bigger wave. In some ways, it's similar to what we've seen in the past, where initially with a wave of technology change, there's initially an infrastructure or enterprise level growth, and that typically gets followed up with something more at the consumer level, or in this case, people talk about the edge. I firmly believe that that will happen. The timing of when the handoff from enterprise to edge is still a question, I think. That's debatable, but not about if it's going to happen. It's about when. We're fairly comfortable in that that will happen.
Those volumes could be orders of magnitude higher than what we're seeing at the data center level. We have high confidence that the future will kind of track with what we've seen historically. That being said, we've done a couple of things. Maybe Jürgen can talk about maybe the platform approach, which the company has really been disciplined about that helps us through kind of the ebb and flows of the industry. From a structure standpoint, we're being very disciplined in our cost, particularly in our fixed cost level. I think we're pretty well prepared for any kind of change in the market, temporary. The last thing I'll say is that while AI and HPC have driven the market, our portfolio of solutions can adapt to wherever there's good segments.
Especially when consumer demand returns, we have a robust portfolio of test and measurement products to address those segments.
Yeah. perhaps as a counterpoint, I think the risk of capacity is actually an opportunity. We’ve invested heavily in a flexible supply chain, allowing us to scale and handle uncertainty. This makes our capacity and manufacturing supply chain a competitive advantage.
Sure. In the material on the way of device MTP3, we said we will increase our R&D expenditures because so many different technologies are coming up and so many complex test flows. We need to build something really surprising in the market, I guess. CTO, you have so many plans, I think.
Yeah, I think that's the nature of AI right now, that everything is so fast. There are various technology options the market may take, and it's uncertain. What you have to do is, I think, multiple things. First of all, you have to find out what's coming and what's not coming. We have established a really tight relationship to industry experts, customers, but also to leading partners to find that out. If you need to develop a new technology, it may take five-plus years. If you start a product, it may take three years. If it's a software enhancement, half a year. The most critical one is the ones where it is far out and you need a long lead time. Our ability to predict trends, I think, is really good and we have a good hit rate.
You need to invest into the different technology options. Third, and that's more the scaling aspect Doug mentioned, you also have to then think if you identified an industry problem, how to map that on our platform in a scaling way so that at the end, everything has to fit together and become effective. That's usually the second step that we build scalable solutions which are compatible with all the install. That's a big value for our customers so they can flexibly shift capacity and reuse the assets, but also allow that platform to be extended and scaled to future needs.
I would add to that too. I'm always challenging Jürgen on R&D because I think more right now is better. The other thing, we can't do it all ourselves is another point, especially now we have to approach things not from just a tester, but a test cell perspective. We have engaged with very critical partners in the industry. A lot of times we are kind of co-investing with those partners to develop that full test cell solution. Sometimes I view that as R&D dollars or yen or euro in those cases. That does not necessarily show up in our direct R&D, but it is certainly focused on development of critical solutions to address these industry problems that Jürgen spoke about.
Yeah. I think we are really extending through your CTO networks and Doug, in your networks, how we can expand the area and the technologies that need to combine all the technologies that need to combine all the technology that is coming , I think. Internally, our operation is getting bigger along with our business size. I think we have some challenges internally too, how we should try to further engage. From CTO viewpoint, what are you focusing?
On a couple of areas. First of all, we are continuously investing into what we call refreshing the platform and the architecture. Those things take a long time. You have to step by step continuously invest. Second is we run programs that we can run now projects for $93,000 in various R&D labs. I mean, it started only in Germany, but now we have extended that to China, to Japan, and we also now starting some projects together in the U.S. This gives us the flexibility to allocate resources and combine things and leverage and get the synergies out of it. Next is most likely also, not most likely, is investment into more software automation and AI to make us internally more productive. That's not only in our software area, but also in ASIC design, thermal simulations, mechanical simulations, and those are just a few points.
Yeah. Yeah, having those, we have very large R&D hubs here in Böblingen and over in Japan. Those are our main two big hubs. I think what we'll see in the future is some level of local R&D specifically placed around customers because the solutions are so complex that there has to be some touch of locality to help implement new solutions. I see us heading in that direction into the next couple of years.
Next question is, it's been, I think, 14 years after company Verigy and then company Advantest has been together, I think. There are lots of many discussions, I think, that we've been through. Now we really became big parties, big family now. On the way from here to futures, I think, we really need to think about cultures inside of the companies, how we should express as a management our company cultures. What are you in a CTO taking care almost all BUs? You start, I think.
I think we have this nice culture of teamwork and collaboration. This is important because people need to talk, not just between R&D, but to our salespeople, to our application engineers to really find out what is important or not. This is very important for in this time to market. Second is, this is also collaboration with partners that we are openly discussed about the industry problems coming and then turn it into, let's say, solutions. As I mentioned, part of the solution to address this complexity is the distribution of tests. Now we have to address that the different BUs or different products are linked together. Therefore, this collaboration or skill of culture of collaboration and teamwork gets more and more important, not just outside, but also inside.
This pair with curiosity, the question, I think that's, I think, a unique characteristic of Advantest.
I think we have initiated our activities or our philosophy, integrity especially. It was, I think we have communicated this in about 2018. Now it's been becoming almost more than five years. We are keeping expressing how important integrity is. This activity along with our daily communication operations, was it helping our commonality what we care most?
I mean, the result shows, right?
Yeah. Yeah. I think the concept that we started with integrity and each letter of integrity has its own meaning that we focus on for different parts of the company is super important to Advantest. I mean, our reputation is a company of high integrity. Our vision is to be the most trusted and valued supplier. I think we're living up to that. We're not perfect, but it's not because we don't ever have high integrity. I feel confident saying that our culture is very well established and something that we protect and hold very dear to us. I mean, we're a 71-year-old company that now is a blend of Japan who has this very long-term view, very service-oriented, excellent engineering technology, the German precision capabilities and approach to platform discipline and the teamwork, and then the cowboys from the U.S.
Honestly, we've pulled this off as a company. A lot of people would have doubted we'd been able to take the best parts of those three cultures. You add into it the Southeast Asia, Taiwan, Korea, and other parts of Europe. I think we've done an excellent job in the company of taking those different cultures and putting them together inside of the Advantest culture, again, which is built around this concept of integrity.
I can see. Doug, you've been CEO one and a half years, I think. What you said, I think it is supported after you became CEO, I think. Our company passed more than 70 years, I think. There are many Japanese and culture-based philosophies, I think. Now one and a half years and more in futures, I think. I think we really being diversed, like what you said, I think. How we should extend our company cultures to be more aggressive, but more humble, I think. Any comment?
Yeah. It has been a year and a half, a little less hair and a few more kilos, I'm sure. I have enjoyed it. One of the best parts of the job is going to the different offices around the world and spending time with our employees around the world. For sure, the world, it's not just device complexity. We often talk about the world is more complex now in so many ways. To have a network within Advantest that can communicate clearly and be on the same page strategically is not an easy undertaking. We spend a lot of time in our management team. We have this really wonderful, I would say, three-way matrix where we have our business units, which are driving the P&L.
We have the functional groups that are supporting the different functions, service, support, sales, administration, operations, these things. Then we have sort of a third layer, which is our regional-based entities that then all cooperate together and gives us the local blend on top of those business unit and functional unit matrices. I am sure other companies have tried to do this, but I think for us, it has really worked quite well to address how we scale. If the business moves in one region versus the other, depending upon geopolitics, our footprint is already in, I think, 16 or 17 countries. It is easy for us to scale depending upon where the business ends up happening. That is something I think we will see more of. We should be proud of, I think, that three-way matrix that has led to a lot of success.
Okay. Let me touch again about our automations, I think. Where or what we need to be aiming for in futures about these automations, Jürgen?
As I just already said, things become much more complex. The time to market pressure continues to dominate everything. We have to enable what we call automation or an entire flow. That is where we are working on. This also is our internal R&D, but also working with partners to have all pieces lined up and interacting efficiently. I think that is the main direction. This means we need to work with EDA companies to prepare the front end, the test content. Then we need to, our solutions need to be able to efficiently manage and control the test content and move content around to the different insertions. Certainly, the results, we need to feed back to process, to design for improvement. This also includes test cells. I strongly believe that die level probing will need to come.
The thermal is one of the key challenges in industry. You also have to think about the test cell aspect, whether that's wafer sort or whether that's in a final test with now kilowatts of thermal control, fast thermal control, but also in SLT, the economics as a last quality gate. All those pieces have to interact and allow our customers to achieve the time to market, the quality levels, and the productivity. This is the main direction we are heading.
Yeah. I would just add, if you look at our history now, going back again to the early midterm planning, we've basically been marching toward this ultimate goal. We took the decision in 2017, 2018 to really double down on semiconductor tests. We felt like that was going to be a place there was enough there for us to focus on that. As we went forward, we picked up different pieces of the solutions. Right now, we've been integrating and enabling this automation, those solutions. Ultimately, there'll be this backend flow. It'll be different for different devices and even different customers. At that point, Advantest will have successfully put this capability in place where we can enable this automation.
Ultimately, the goal of the company is to really be able to provide this enablement of the backend flow that is so much more complicated now than it was just five years ago.
Yeah. I think, we keep getting complexities. It's been so complex. I think this complexity is really the thing what is going to keep driving our activities. Also, this is one of the biggest hurdles for our customers so that we keep focusing on this complex semiconductor, I mean, technologies and the industries, sure. It was good communications and many insight input. Thank you so much. I think we now are moving to Q&A. Doug, any comment at the end?
Yeah. I would just say that there's never been a better time in our careers for test. And we've lived through some. So we've seen lots of changes and ups and downs. And we never fully expected things to get to where they are already now. But the company has just been investing continuously for this time. And like I said, we're kind of in this period of accelerated growth where test is just going to continue to be a value-added part of the semiconductor value chain. And we feel positioned going forward as a company.
Let's now move to questions and Q&A.
Goldman Sachs Japan, Mr. Nakamura, please go ahead. Goldman Sachs Shoken, Nakamura様, ご質問をよろしくお願いいたします。
Thank you very much for taking my question. Thank you very much for the wonderful session today. My question is regarding the die level probing. I think there were some remarks made several times during this session. I just wanted to understand how you're looking at this opportunity going forward. We understand that the next device of the emerging GPU may potentially start to adopt the die level prober. I wanted to see when you would potentially see the contribution in terms of earnings and how we should quantify that impact.
Hi, session long, arigatou gozaimashita. 私がお伺いしたいのは DI level probingについてです。先ほどのファイヤーサイドチャットでも何度か言及されたと思うんですけれども、この機会に事業機会についてどう見てらっしゃるんでしょうか。次のバーチャントGPU、DL、DI level proberのテストインサーションが始まるのではないかなと思っているんですけども、売上への寄与がいつ頃始まるのか、定量的にどのぐらいの規模が見込めるのか教えていただけませんでしょうか。
Okay. Yeah. Thank you, Nakamura-san. Good afternoon. Thank you for the question. I'll go first. Maybe between Jürgen and I, we can expand on the die level probe opportunity. From a high-level standpoint, we definitely are seeing traction build for die level probe insertion for known good die and for known good COW use. This is a very dynamic area because it's different. The value proposition seems like it started to be fairly compelling around this insertion. In terms of timing, we see kind of later in next year, really there to be some definite ramping potential for this business, followed by several years of pretty high growth. I'll just put a condition on that, that again, the use case and the value add for this insertion has to be very clear for it to have that kind of aggressive ramp.
Hi, Nakamura-san, ご質問ありがとうございました。最初に私の方から質問して、その後 Jürgen がフォローアップするかもしれません。ハイレベルな観点から見ると、ダイレベルへの関心は高まりつつありまして、それは KGD, known good die, あと KGCOW, known good how の観点から関心が高まっていって、この領域はすごくダイナミックに動きがある領域ではないかなと思っておりまして、これを通じて我々が提供できる価値というのはかなり高いのではないかと思います。タイミングについてもご質問ございましたが、ランプアップのポテンシャルというのが来年下期ぐらいにそのポテンシャルが見込めるのではないかなと思いまして、その後に数年間の好成長が見込めるのではないかなと思いますが、その前提としてダイレベルプロービングによる価値がかなりクリアになっている、クリアになっているということがこの前提条件でございます。
Let me give you some background why we believe that this is an opportunity for us. The power levels at the wafer test are so high that thermal control and warpage at the wafer level, the entire wafer level, is too high and difficult to manage. People really want to do real known good die and want to do matching of chiplets later on. They need to perform very precise and accurate known good die test at the hot temperature.
Hi, まず私の方からそのダイレベルプロービングに対する関心が高まっている背景について回答を差し上げたいと思います。現状、ウェハーソートのノーレベルで熱関連、パワー関連がだいぶ高い水準が高まっていて、その結果、歪み、ウォーピングやサーマルのサーマル熱制御を管理することがますます難しくなっています。だからこそ KGD, known good die の重要性が高まっております。そしてさらにはチップレットのマッチングも必要になってくるため、そのため KGD を精密にマッチングすることというのが必要になってきています。
Going to a die level, whether it's die or COW, enables our customers to do much more precise measurement. That's the driver for this opportunity.
Hi. なので DI level そして COW への動きが始まると、お客様にとって精密な測定というのが重要になってきております。
Thank you very much.
Thank you very much, Nakamura-san. Next questions from Morgan Stanley MUFG Research Japan. Mr. Wadagi, please go ahead. Morgan Stanley MUFG Shoken, Wadagi-sama, ご質問よろしくお願いいたします。
Hello. I'm Tetsuya Wadagi. My question is about AI. How can I use AI to improve and enhance your semiconductor testing business?
Hi. 私からの質問は AI の活用についてなんですけれども、御社の半導体テスト事業を改善する、向上するためにどのように AI を活用できるのか教えていただけませんでしょうか。
Certainly we use AI to improve the efficiency in R&D. Just to give you a few examples, we use that for software development, code completion. Another interesting case is automatic test case for software test generation. That really helps us to improve time to market on the software development.
Hi.
Yo.
まず AI は既に活用しておりまして、R&D の効率性の向上に向けていくつか具体例を差し上げますと、ソフトウェア開発、コードの生成、あとはテストケースのオートメーションなど、ソフトウェアの time to market の向上に活用しています。
Another interesting case is on the hardware side. You may know that ASIC design is one of our key technologies. Using the latest toolset from the EDA industry with AI really helps us to speed up the ASIC development, FPGA development, which will be used and is used in the hardware design.
Hi. あとハードウェアについてもお話ししますが、皆さんご存知の通り、我々にとって ASIC の開発は鍵となる技術であります。我々 EDA と連携することもございますが、ASIC や FPGA の開発における AI の活用という点がハードウェアでの AI の活用事例になります。
We do not stop with R&D. We also use these kinds of technologies to enable our customers and our sales and support people. Code completion for programming, software checking, debugging tooling, I mean, those are easily being rolled out now. With that, we're going to be more effective in supporting our customers and our customers themselves gaining efficiency through AI.
Hi. そして我々は R&D 以外にも顧客のサポートにおいても AI を活用しています。顧客の営業およびサポートに対して、という意味ではコードのコンプリーション、ソフトウェアのデバッグ、ジェネレーションなどに活用されていて、これによってお客様に対するサポートを充実させると同時に、お客様の効率性の向上もサポートしています。
Let me add one last thing, which is one of the reasons we have a lot of confidence in just the industry and AI is because of what Jürgen mentioned. On one hand, we're using it extensively for our development. We're using it in our own operations to drive velocity, productivity. Also, we're enabling it to be used with our testers. We can see the effects of that. When we look at it just as Advantest, we see just the amazing power that this is enabling in the industry. If all companies are doing what we're doing, there's a lot of reason for optimism for AI. I just wanted to make mention of that.
Hi. 最後に私の方からもう一点見方を付け加えたいなと思ってるんですけども、当社自身 AI 市場に対しての今後の進展について自信を持っています。なぜかというと、先ほど Jürgen が申した通り、弊社はかなり AI を社内の業務オペレーションについて活用しており、それによって社内の業務効率のスピードも高まってますし、生産性も高まっています。テスターの開発などにおいても AI がその効果を発現しており、社内で AI のパワーというものを実感しております。当社のみならず他の企業もこういった AI の取り組みをすると考えるのであれば、AI の市場についてポジティブな見方ができるというふうに感じております。
Thank you very much.
ありがとうございました。 Thank you very much, Mr. Wadagi, for your question. The next question is B of A Securities Japan. Mr. Hirakawa, please. B of A Shoken, Hirakawa-sama, ご質問お願いいたします。
My question. We know that Advantest is one of the most successful Japanese companies in terms of globalization, leveraging acquisitions. Actually, I have a question to Doug. You've been in this position for more than a year. What's the most difficult part for you to integrate this management at this company as a global company? What have you changed at the company in terms of the culture? Yoshida-san was a great CEO, and you are doing great. What is your achievement so far?
Hi. Advantestは日本企業の中でもグローバリゼーションおよびM&Aといった観点で成功している企業のうちの一社だと思います。DougがCEOに就任してから1年以上経ちましたが、このグローバルな企業をマネージする上での最も大きなチャレンジはどういうことだったのか教えていただけませんでしょうか。Yoshida-sanも素晴らしいCEOではあったと思いますが、DougがCEOになってからカルチャーをどういうふうに変えたのか、CEOに就任してからの大きな何を達成したのか教えていただけませんでしょうか。
Yeah. Thank you very much, Hirakawa-san, for the question. I just want to say first that our globalized company and the focus on teamwork across the entire company did not start in the last year or two. It started a long time ago in the company. Advantest has always been a company on the cutting edge in terms of its ability to be a global company. It did not start with me. It did not even start with Yoshida-san. We are just building upon the legacy of a lot of different leaders in the company. I want to start by saying that.
Hi. まず一番最初にお伝えしたいことは、当社のグローバルな特性、またチームワークといったところは最近始まったばかりのことではありません。これは過去数年間において長い期間、我々は既にそういう会社であり、常に最先端を行く会社でありましたので、私または Yoshida の時代から始まったものではなく、これは過去の先人たち、過去のリーダーたちが築いた土台に基づいて、我々がそれに積み重ねているだけに過ぎません。
There are two areas maybe I'm focused on continuing. One, we showed that slide about the matrix and the regional aspect of our business. One of the key things right now, because the device complexity is driving these very integrated solutions, Advantest is unique in that we have different kinds of products and technologies across the company. Jürgen, one of his—he's got two roles, but one of his key roles as CTO is to cut across those different product lines and technologies and begin to integrate them into the test cell and test cell solutions. That is kind of going beyond what we had been in the past. I think encouraging the company to continue to integrate technology across our different domains is very critical.
Hi. 私が CEO に就任してからフォーカスしているところなんですけれども、先ほどのスライドでマトリックス構造について投影させていただいたと思うんですけども、社内ではいくつかのマトリックスがあって、その中に地域、プロジェクトしたマトリックスもあり、それ以外のマトリックスもあるんですけれども、足元の重要な点としてはデバイスのコンプレクシティが高まっており、それによって統合されたソリューション、当社ではインテグレートソリューションと呼んでいますが、その重要性がますます高まっているということでして、Jürgen Zeller は二つの役目を持っていますが、そのうち CTO として彼の重要な役割というのは、当社がいろんな技術を持ち合わせている中、それを社内オーダーする形でいろんなプロダクト、技術部もいろんな技術を横断的に取り入れて、テストセルソリューションの中に取り込んでいることです。これは過去から我々が進化した点であるというふうに自負しており、今後もこのインテグレーションということを続けていきたいというふうに考えています。
The second thing, just quickly, is that Advantest has a history of having a very strong local presence. Because of the need to be tightly coupled with our customers, as the speed of the industry continues to go beyond our expectations, the local Advantest entities become very critical in order to support that dialogue with customers and partners. That is something you'll see us continue to do, to empower the local Advantest entity in a very concerted approach with our business units and our functional units.
Hi. 次に付け加えたいこととしては、我々は地域密着型のビジネスをしていて、それがますます重要になってきているということです。我々が事業を進めていく上で、顧客、またパートナーな密接な連携がとても重要ですが、足元の技術進化のスピードが早まる中、ローカルないろいろなアドバンテストのローカルの現地法人が顧客、そしてそれぞれのパートナーとやり取りすることというのは、我々にとってより大きな鍵となっています。我々はこういったローカルの現地法人をさらにエンパワーメントし、同時にローカルのチームとファンクショナルユニット及び事業部門、ビジネスユニットの足並みを揃えて、この 3 軸構造のマトリックスを進めていくという方針です。
Thank you very much.
Thank you very much, Hirakawa-san. Next question from Citigroup Global Markets Japan. Mr. Shibano, please go ahead. Citigroup Shoken, Shibano-sama, go-shitsumon o onegai itashimasu.
Shibano と申します。Jürgen さんにサイコニック、Cyclonic について質問したいと思います。ATE と EDA をコンシステントに接続するソリューションになるかと思いますが、既存の重要な顧客をこのサイコニック、Cyclonic によりましてロックインすることが可能になると考えてよいでしょうか。また、今アドバンテストのシステムをメインで使用していないユーザーが一層アドバンテストのツールを使うようなきっかけ、カタリスト、トリガーになると考えていいでしょうか。また、EDA とのコラボレーションということで、もし他社にない御社のよりコラボレーティブなカルチャーや歴史的な EDA との関係性で他に真似ができないようなバックグラウンドがあれば伺いたいと思います。よろしくお願いします。
Thank you. My name is Shibano. My question is directed to Mr. Jürgen Zeller in relation to Cyclonic. I understand that Cyclonic is a solution that will bridge the gap between ATE and EDA. Is this meant to lock in existing customers? If I can put it that way, that's my first question. My second question is, is this going to help draw in new customers, customers that were not doing business with Advantest previously? Thirdly, in terms of your relationship with EDA, are there certain things that are unique to Advantest, for instance, the collaborative nature of your company or your relationship with EDA that cannot be matched or copied by others?
Okay. That is three questions. This is a new opportunity for the industry because in the past, EDA and ATE have been two different ecosystems in that sense. Now the complexity is so high that solutions are needed to bridge that gap. Our player, as you said, is Cyclonic. Itself, it is a business opportunity for us. It also helps certainly later on the following insertions because sign-off pre and post validation is a big market. Also, the DFT developed there is the basis for the later test.
Hi. 実質もいただいたのではないかなと思います。これは業界にとって新しいチャンスではないかと思います。なぜかというと、これまで過去は ATE と EDA が二つ異なるエコシステムとして存在していたからです。現在、複雑性が増している中、その橋渡し、ブリッジが必要というふうに当社は考えていて、そのため我々はサイコニックというソリューションを準備し、それが当社にとってチャンスになるというふうに考えています。このサイコニックというのは、その後のテストインサーションを手伝ってくれるシステムになっていて、なぜかというとサインオフというプロセスが特に重要であるからです。
So。
重要で大きなマーケットであるからです。
Okay. What's unique? I think Doug and Yas already mentioned. It's, I think, our culture. We have good collaborations going with all EDA vendors, whether that's on the executive level, but also management level, engineers level, and around joint projects. That's needed for this to make it successful. I think there our open culture helps. Certainly also our position in the HPC market, that this is not only with EDA companies, but it's also with the design and DFT departments of our customers. Bringing those three parties together is the secret and makes it happen and leverage it across the entire flow.
Hi. 先ほど Doug と Mihashi も言いましたが、当社のカルチャーについての言及があったんですけども、これは EDA との連携の上でとても重要なポイントかなというふうに感じていて、なぜかというと、我々の EDA 企業とのパートナーシップというのは、エグゼクティブ、一番上の偉い人たちのレベルだけではなく、マネジメントレベルもそうですし、エンジニアレベルでも起こっていることで、こういったいろんな層を通しての連携というのは必要不可欠であるからです。そして我々の企業文化がこういった EDA との連携においてプラスになっているというもう一つの側面は、HPC に関連する精密性、プレシジョンです。我々の顧客の企業の中の EDA 部門、そして設計部門、デザイン部門、そして DFT 部門、彼らを我々がつなぐ役割を果たしており、それは実は当社の成功にとって鍵となることだというふうに考えていて、我々はそれをレバレッジして全体のフローにつなげようとしています。
ありがとうございました。
Thank you very much, Shibano-san. Here are questions. Now we are already approaching the scheduled closing time. I'd like to pass the microphone to my boss, Mihashi-san. Could you please wrap up by your side?
Yeah. Thank you so much again. I mean, it was really good communication here, but also communication with many people. Thank you so much. At the end, I just want to have one point. I'd like to bring it up, I think. I think having a good circumstance in the future, what we are seeing, I think we need to have a further step for our capacity, what I think we are establishing now, I think. Doug, I want you to speak out maybe a bit more what it's going, I think.
Oh.
Oh, yeah. Sorry.
Hi. 皆さん、本日お時間ありがとうございました。皆様ととても良い対話を持てたのではないかなと思うんですけれども、最後にこちらから一言申し上げたいと思っておりまして、足元の事業環境、そして今後の見通しも両方である中、さらなるキャパ拡大、今進行中のキャパ拡大に一層の強化が必要じゃないかなと思うんですけども、Doug からコメントをお願いできませんでしょうか。
Yeah. Thank you. I spoke about the velocity, time to market, and then this is the question about the scale. We've been, the last couple of quarters, intentionally talking about our production expansion. I did not mean to cause any confusion with this. This is a way for us just to give some numbers so that people are all on the same page. Let me first say that the numbers I will give you now are not intended to be extrapolated into sales or available market. They are purely the capacity that we are putting in place for the market.
Hi. と先ほどタイムトゥマーケットのスピードが上がっているというふうにお話ししましたが、これはスケール、規模に直結するもののお話でして、直近２社半期ぐらいでしょうか、我々は意図的に皆さんにキャパ拡大に関してメッセージをお送りしております。もしかしたらそのメッセージがちょっと分かりにくかったかもしれないかなと思ってるんですけども、あえて状況をクリアにするためにこの機会をお借りして皆さんにお話ししたいと思うんですけれども、一点ご留意いただきたいのが、今からお話しする数字というのは、それが必ずしも売上とあと市場規模、タムに直結するわけじゃなく、あくまでもキャパという観点で聞こえていただければなと思います。
If we speak just from our SoC platform, in terms of our targeted capacity, our intention is to put in at least 5,000 system capacity by the end of fiscal 2026. Beyond that, we have already laid in place the plans to go to 7,500 within some period of time, a couple of years, or if we need to do faster, it is possible. A third step of 10,000 systems is out a little further out in time. You can see we have a clear direction of capacity expansion with some actual figures to clear up any misconception about the size of our scaling.
Hi. SOC の方につきましては、2026年度末にかけて 5,000 システムをターゲットとして持っておりまして、その後数年かけて 7,500 台というのを視野に入れていて、もしかしたらそれをもっと早く実行しなければいけないかもしれないんですけども、そしてさらにその先には 10,000 台という規模感も見据えております。こういった数値感を皆様にお話しすることで理解が深まれば良いなというふうに思っております。
On the memory side, certainly the memory systems have a smaller ratio to SoC, but the trajectory of scale is very similar.
次にメモリについてなんですけども、SOC と比べてその比率というのは小さくなってしまうんですけども、規模の拡大という意味では同じベクトルを見ています。
This is just our capacity, including buffer, and not intended for people to make any kind of correlation to sales or TAM. I just felt it was a good opportunity to be very clear about our production plans. Thank you, Yas. Thank you, Doug.
Hi. 改めて申し上げますが、売上タムに直結するという意味でのメッセージを出すこのバッファーを、こちらあくまでもバッファーを含んだキャパシティであるということをご理解いただけますと幸いです。これによって当社の生産計画に対する皆様の理解がクリアになることを願っております。
Okay. Thank you so much. And thank you for now let's close the meeting. Again, thank you so much. Have a good day and night and morning.
Thank you very much for taking time to join Advantest Corporation's IR Fireside Chat despite your busy schedule today.