Hello, and welcome to the Kulicke & Soffa second quarter results conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It's now my pleasure to turn the call over to Joseph Elgindy, Senior Director of Investor Relations for Kulicke & Soffa. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Welcome everyone to Kulicke & Soffa's fiscal second quarter 2022 conference call. Joining us on today's call, we have Fusen Chen, President and Chief Executive Officer, and Lester Wong, Chief Financial Officer. For those of you who have not received a copy of today's results, the release as well as our supplemental earnings presentation are both available in the investor relations section of our website at investor.kns.com. In addition to historical statements, today's remarks will contain statements relating to future events and our future results. These statements are forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Our actual results and financial condition may differ materially from what is indicated in those forward-looking statements.
For a complete discussion of the risks associated with Kulicke & Soffa that could affect our future results and financial condition, please refer to our recent SEC filings, specifically the 10-K for the year ended October 2, 2021 and the 8-K filed yesterday. With that said, I would now like to turn the call over to Fusen Chen for the business overview. Please go ahead, Fusen.
Thank you, Joe. We continue to make significant progress toward our long-term target and remain well-positioned to support significant and fundamental transition occurring within the automotive, semiconductor, and advanced display markets. I will provide a brief update to each shortly. In parallel, industry growth through calendar year 2022 is still anticipated to remain well above average, creating ongoing need for capacity expansion across our served markets. We continue to be in a multi-year industry expansion period, which is consistent with the market assumptions shared at our Investor Day last September. Before discussing our business performance, I would like to provide our perspective on the Russia-Ukraine war and the COVID-related shutdown. At this point in time, we do not anticipate this event will materially impact our outlook, and we'd like to provide some additional context.
First, I would like to address the humanitarian crisis and express our concern and compassion for a prompt resolution of the Russia-Ukraine war. We do not expect K&S to have any meaningful direct operational or demand impact due to this conflict. For the broader semiconductor industry, material and commodity costs for items such as noble gases may increase a lot. We do not anticipate this to be a major concern to our business. Separately, we wanted to also provide an update related to Shanghai COVID lockdown. Our consumables facility in Suzhou, China, where we produce capillary and hub blades, continue to be fully operational. Logistics challenges increased temporarily, but our production and supply chain team proactively identified alternative routes, mitigating the impact. To reiterate, we do not anticipate either of these recent events to significantly impact our outlook.
We remain focused to continue proactively managing our own supply chain risk very closely, as we have successfully demonstrated over the past two years. Overall, the industry remains very resilient and has overcome many obstacles over the past two years. We believe the prolonged state of industry supply chain challenge is shifting production strategy from a just-in-time approach to a more prudent and long-term inventory management and capital equipment planning approach. Moving on to our March quarter performance. We continue to make a meaningful progress toward the specific opportunity outlined during our Investor Day. Customer engagement are proceeding as anticipated, and we remain well-positioned to actively support several mega trends impacting the automotive, semiconductor, and advanced display market over the coming years. Our near-term ability to develop, qualify, and recognize revenue on our growing portfolio of solutions will help solidify our long-term strategy and position within this key market.
I will briefly explain each. First, within automotive, semiconductor capacity and battery assembly needs are anticipated to continue growing above average as the transition to the electric vehicle and autonomous driving continue to accelerate. We have a dominant leadership position within the automotive segment we serve, and continue to expand our offering and increase customer engagement. Currently, we are aggressively preparing our next-generation laser-based battery assembly solution for qualification and anticipate acceptance over the coming quarters. In addition to this new system, we are also very engaged in driving acceptance and broadening the base of our proven wedge bonding battery solution to a variety of new customers. Secondly, within the semiconductor space, we continue to broaden our portfolio and further increase alignment to the market's renewed focus on assembly.
The growing complexity of semiconductor assembly for both leading-edge and the high-volume market is creating several new technology-driven opportunities and enhancing our long-term growth prospects. While our primary focus is to develop a new capital equipment solution, as assembly becomes more complex, production challenges increase, driving the need for closed-loop feedback and a better process as production control. Last month, we announced a partnership with PDF Solutions to provide customers with a new analytics platform that leverages the comprehensive real-time data available within our leading assembly system with artificial intelligence and the machine learning capability. Ultimately, we anticipate this partnership will directly add value to customers by enabling efficiency and throughput enhancement for both high-volume and the leading-edge semiconductor production. Additionally, more complex assembly represents a significant paradigm shift for an industry that historically relies heavily on node shrink.
This shifting paradigm is increasing the technology-driven growth rate within both high-volume and the leading-edge semiconductor applications. Growing demand for multi-die packages, new shielding requirements, and the new memory opportunity are expanding our core market prospects and creating the need for additional features and the capability for advanced wire bonding. In parallel, we are also gaining share in leading-edge and optical markets. During the March quarter, we recognized revenue on 7 TCB systems, supporting next-generation interconnects for mobile application processors and high-performance computing. Our TCB order book continued to increase. As we outlined it last quarter, the adoption of thermal compression is occurring within both OSAT and the IDMs, and we continue to pursue both customer groups with a major focus on mobility, sensing, silicon photonics, and heterogeneous applications.
We also remain very focused on our Fluxless Thermal Compression solution and recently received a purchase order for several systems which will ship later this year. Our capabilities of fluxless TCB are very unique and provide an efficient and capable solution for high performance chiplet integration. This recent purchase order increase our alignment with the long-term cloud spending and the chiplet trend. Finally, in addition to the evolving semiconductor assembly market, our opportunity in advanced display continue to expand. We remain extremely committed and we are actively enhancing our leadership in both Mini LED and Micro LED applications. Our advanced display engagement and efforts continue to revolve around three area. Near-term capacity expansion for PIXALUX, new engagement and qualification for our recently introduced LUMINEX system, and the long-term ongoing development for next generation display assembly solution.
During the March quarter, we shipped two LUMINEX systems for qualification to separate customers, and recently also received two purchase orders for initial LUMINEX systems. This system addresses different process steps at the different customer side and represents a significant milestone in our advanced display business. We are remain optimistic on our advanced LED opportunities and look forward to providing an update to our long-term target over the coming quarters. In addition to our growing market access, we continue to improve margins and drive strong operational cash flow at the current level of business. During March quarter, we achieved $384.3 million of revenue and a non-GAAP EPS of $1.95. Within capital equipment, we generated $333.9 million of revenue. End market condition come in largely as expected.
The sequential change driven by general semiconductor was largely related to our ability to surge production aggressively in support of customers expansion plan in September and the December quarters. Additionally, we continue to see supply chain constraints and global logistic challenges limiting the pace of growth throughout the electronic space. As a reminder, we still anticipate semiconductor growth to remain above average into fiscal 2023, which is also a view shared by a major third party forecaster. Despite 2022 still being an extremely strong semiconductor growth year, it will be relatively lower than the dramatic growth experienced last year. Excess industry capacity in early 2021 provide headroom to enable last year's aggressive growth.
However, at the start of 2022, this excess capacity was no longer available, which created shortage and additional supply chain headwind, and is now extending the global chip shortage. To highlight this relationship, the majority of high-volume systems we shipped in the March quarters were related to new fab capacity that has only recently come online. This reinforces our view that broad industry supply chain challenges should begin to resolve as wafer capacity growth improves later this year. Within our business, product mix is evolving, which is reducing our reliance on industry capacity expansion and better aligns our business with the technology and the secular growth opportunity in many of our end markets. This was clearly outlined during our Investor Day, and I will provide a few examples that highlight this transition.
Within general semiconductor, our thermal compression sales have doubled, and our wafer-level bonding system have tripled in revenue sequentially. Within the wire bonding market, we are experiencing an ongoing increase in demand for complex multi-die wire bonding package in high volume consumer market. We are also seeing an ongoing ramp in wire bonding to improve shielding requirement for 5G applications. Later this year, we anticipate customers to start wire bonding assembly for application at a 6 nanometer technology node. These trends are increasing the rate of the future capacity and also technology need across our semiconductor offer. With LED, advanced display system have remained consistent and represent 88% of LED sales in the March quarter. At this point, we are already approaching our fiscal year revenue target of $80 million and expect to reach the target ahead of schedule.
Within automotive, demand has increased dramatically and is expected to remain above average over the coming years due to the growing demand for electric and autonomous vehicles. In addition to high-growth markets like battery assembly, we also provide high reliability IC and power semiconductor solutions, which are essential to this technology driven tech change and the broader automotive industry. Finally, within memory, we are experiencing ongoing demand for our high-performance market-leading NAND assembly system. We are also working to develop a new cost-effective solution for stacked DRAMs, leveraging our wafer-level packaging capabilities. From an end market standpoint, we anticipate memory, automotive, and LED to remain strong. Additionally, the 5G transition and the need for more complex assembly continue to provide long-term tailwind to our core business.
We continue to anticipate wafer capacity growth will improve in the second calendar half through 2024, which will ease industry supply chain challenges and will provide additional visibility to our outlook. In summary, our progress on new growth initiatives and customer engagement remains on track. We are expanding our position across several new markets while also actively participating in a fundamental transition within our core market. With our growth, long-term development engagement with industry leaders, we have developed several highly competitive systems and are positioned to win new qualifications across the advanced packaging, automotive, and advanced display portfolio over the coming quarters. Our ability to succeed near term can provide significant upside to our long-term outlook and target. We look forward to demonstrating this progress over the coming quarters. With that said, I will now turn the call over to Lester, who will discuss our financial performance. Lester?
Thank you, Fusen. My remarks today will refer to GAAP results unless noted. As Fusen mentioned, during the March quarter, we continued to enhance our fundamentals and growth prospects by executing on internal development goals, driving external partnerships, and returning value directly to shareholders through our increased dividend and aggressive repurchase activity. We believe our business and cash generation potential have improved in a consistent and sustainable way due to our ongoing strategic execution and participation in long-term technology transitions Fusen outlined. In addition, we continue to make progress to achieve our long-term financial targets. During the March quarter, we generated revenue of $384.3 million and very strong gross margins of 52.5%, up over 400 basis points sequentially.
This strong growth margin performance highlights our consistent operational efficiency and improving product mix, which includes an accounting true-up related to a long-term and ongoing customer project. Without this true-up, growth margin would have been just above 51%, in line with our long-term targets. non-GAAP operating expenses came in at $66.8 million during the March quarter, as some of our SG&A plans were reprioritized, delaying spending to the June quarter. Tax expense for the quarter came in at $13.7 million, and we anticipate an effective tax rate of around 13% for the full fiscal year. non-GAAP net income came in $121.5 million, driving $1.95 of non-GAAP EPS during the March quarter. Significantly above expectations due to stronger growth margins and lower expenses. Turning to the balance sheet.
Days of accounts receivable increased slightly from 84 to 86 days. Days of inventory increased from 75 to 104 days, and days of accounts payable decreased from 56 to 49 days. During the March quarter, we generated free cash flows of $69.8 million and ended the quarter with a net cash balance of $415.6 million. In early March, we expanded the share repurchase authorization by $400 million and extended the timing through August 2025. Shortly after this announcement, we entered into a $150 million accelerated share repurchase program, which allow us to immediately reduce share count by an initial 2.5 million shares, equivalent to nearly 4% of shares outstanding. This accelerated program has completed in late April.
At this point, we have $340 million remaining on the repurchase authorization, and we intend to resume open market purchasing opportunistically. This remaining balance equates to over 10% of the company's current market value. Our competitive dividend yield and ongoing opportunistic repurchase activity continue to provide additional paths beyond our fundamental growth prospects to create and deliver value to shareholders. For the June quarter, we expect demand to remain stable and anticipate approximately $365 million of revenue $20 million± , which includes a risk adjustment that considers our current view on COVID-related closures, ongoing global logistic difficulties, and industry supply chain challenges. For the June quarter, we anticipate gross margins to remain strong at 49% ± 50 basis points due to product mix and absence of the one-time true-up.
Non-GAAP operating expenses is anticipated to be approximately $74 million2% ±, and non-GAAP EPS to be $1.53,10% ±. We are very focused on supporting this ongoing period of industry expansion and are extremely focused to drive new engagements, qualifications, and ultimately ramp production of our new advanced packaging, automotive, and advanced display solutions. Execution on our development and qualification goals throughout fiscal 2022 can potentially drive upside to the long-term targets shared during our investor day. This continues to be a very exciting period in the company's history. Over the past two years, our core business and growth prospects have fundamentally improved, and we are aggressively executing on the multifaceted growth strategy outlined last September. We look forward to sharing additional information regarding these new opportunities over the coming quarters. This concludes our prepared comments.
Operator, please open the call for questions.
Thank you. We'll now be conducting a question and answer session. If you'd like to be placed into question queue, please press star one on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star two if you'd like to remove your question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing star one. One moment please, while we poll for questions. Our first question today is coming from Craig Ellis from B. Riley. Your line is now live.
Yeah, thanks for taking the question. Guys, congratulations on the very strong strategic initiative execution. First two product-related questions. First, on the LUMINEX side, can you give us some color on whether the orders you're receiving are for R&D related use or are those production tools? Can you give us some indication on order size? Then on the NAND side, is it your sense that the demand for NAND is additional layer count work that customers are doing, or is it capacity or both?
Craig, our first generation is PIXALUX, and LUMINEX is a second system, is a laser-based and provide much higher productivity. I think this is a very huge market. In the meantime, customer need to have a higher productivity. That's why we introduce this system. To answer your first questions, we actually ship, you know, we already in a three site for qualification. Normally, qualification will take about six to nine months to finish it or sometimes take a little bit longer, really depend on complication in the customer side. After that, I think if we're successful, it will be a high volume order. Actually, LUMINEX are at the initial stage for qualification.
We have three qualification sites, and the order actually probably is also actually will be shipped and also need to be qualified. At this stage, I think many customers are waiting for our system for qualification. Hopefully after qualification, we will see higher growth of our revenue related to LUMINEX, probably second half of 2023. That's our view. If I miss any other questions.
Got it. Yeah. Following up in demand drivers for strength, is that layer count work for customers or capacity adds? Then on the financial side, Lester, can you just comment on two items. One, what drove the upside to gross margin excluding that true-up that you mentioned? In the past, I think the company identified potential for $1.58 billion in revenues this year. What's the company's view on revenue potential this year, versus what it expressed three months ago? Thanks, team.
Craig, I think your question about NAND, right? Stacked DRAM, stacked NAND.
Yeah.
Okay. Actually, in you know, stacked NAND, we have absolutely, you know, leadership position, you know, a dominant position. We see actually NAND, you know, grows nicely. In my script, actually I mentioned about stacked DRAM. The stacked DRAM actually, you know, the process for connection between a stacked DRAM was use a TSV, right? In this case, we are working with a leading customer, try to actually replace a TSV by vertical wire provided by our actually, you know, process, wafer-level packaging Stud Bumping process. To reduce the cost and also for putting, you know, all the form factor of TSV. That was my remark in the script.
Oh, got it. Okay.
So that-
Excuse, yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Hi, Craig. As far as the gross margin upside, besides the one-time accounting true-up, I think the upside was, again, as we've talked about many times before, it's a lot depending on product mix. I think both in the ball bonding business unit, we sold less LED bonders and more higher-power computing bonders, which gave us better margins. That's also true in wedge bonder. We also saw, you know, the higher margin product in wedge bonder for power management. And then also, for this quarter, the split between capital equipment and APS. APS actually was a little bit higher percentage this quarter, and APS, as you know, has a higher margin. Finally, we also, besides product mix, what affects the gross margin is customer mix.
Our customer mix shifted a little bit more to the IDMs versus the OSATs, which generally also give us a slightly higher margin. All those factors together, in addition to the one-time accounting true-up, gave us a very strong over 52% gross margin.
Excellent. Finally, on the full year revenue view, Lester?
Yes.
Craig, you know, at this moment, actually although we still seeing some shortage, a little bit headwind for the industry, like a shortage in the material, mainly is a component IC and the wafer capacity. Also COVID-related challenge caused us some logistics and a shutdown in the customer side. We also still seeing the wafer capacity will increase in the second half of 2022, you know, this year. At this moment, the end market demand remains still very strong. It's our view, we still think, you know, 1.58 actually is achievable, attainable, at this moment.
Thanks, guys.
Thank you. Our next question is coming from Tom Diffely from D.A. Davidson. Your line is now live.
Yes. Good morning. Thanks for the question. First, I'm just following up on your last comment. What is your expectation for industry unit growth? And perhaps if you can quantify the wafer capacity growth you see for this year as well, and where that, you know, how it compares to a normal or typical year.
This year, actually, I think it's less than last year. We actually already put into our forecast. It's our view, probably, wafer capacity will increase a little bit more because our year actually finishes in September, right? We probably only have initial three months to probably enjoy if it come up additional wafer capacity. Actually our view of unit count does not change, you know, from beginning of the year, right? It is significantly lower than the last year. I think last year was much higher than 10%, right? This year is a more normal year.
Okay. I think you made a comment earlier that you thought that, the wafer growth you could see it going through 2024.
Right.
Does that portend, I guess then, for a pretty strong unit growth over the next couple of years as well then?
That, I think that's a third-party view also. I think, the next few years, the unit count, actually normal for us probably is about 6%, maybe 6%-8%.
Okay, great. A lot of the equipment guys are seeing fairly mixed business between the leading edge wafer growth capacity and the trailing edge.
Right.
You know, from your point of view, is there one of those that's a particularly better driver? I know historically, the trailing edge has been a better driver of wire bonding, but since you have so many projects now at near the leading edge, I was curious if that also is gonna be a fairly nice driver for you for the next few years.
Well, I think in my remark I mentioned, you know, this quarter, the majority of our bonder actually go to the fab, just you know finish you know our construction, right? I think both you know leading edge and you know normal like IoT you know all these devices both capacity will expand. Of course, at this moment, I think because of front-end capacity need to take a much longer time to prepare, right? I think probably investment a little bit heavy, but at this moment, I think both the back end and front-end wafer you know advance and you know the normal wafer actually both capacity will increase in the second half.
Okay, great. Finally, can you talk a little bit about your partnership with PDF Solutions and the creation of the closed loop assembly solution? How does that, do you think, impact revenue going forward? Are you gonna be able to create some recurring revenue streams just from the data flow? Or how do you view that longer term?
Right. I think at this moment, the real-time monitoring, you know, all the information convert, you know, become a closed loop is very important because of the process and everything getting more complex. Partnership, we do believe is added value to our customers in terms of efficiency, throughput and yield analysis. I think at the first one or two years, later on after we get enough experience, we probably will help our APS revenue, right? That's our view.
Okay. Thank you for your time today.
Thank you.
Thank you. Next question is coming from Krish Sankar from Cowen and Company. Your line is now live.
Hi, thanks for taking my question. I have a few of them. First one, can you guys tell what the wire bonder lead times are today?
Yeah. Krish, I think wire bonder lead time is about 4.5 months.
4.5 months. Got it. Okay. I think if I remember right, I think Fusen kind of, you know, I understand there's a lot of capacity constraints, et cetera, but.
Right.
You feel okay with the $1.58 billion number for this year. I'm just kind of curious, you know, at what point do you think some of these, you know, growth initiatives like the auto, you know, advanced mix et cetera, will start offsetting your legacy wire bonder or is that like way down the road?
Krish, maybe I answer maybe not from a number point of view, right? As you know, ball bonder actually is a big business, and used to be very cyclical. In all, in my view, actually, I think, what we try to do is, make sure the ball bonder we have leadership position, and also ensure ball bonder grow on top of a new initiative we have, right? Actually overall, I am quite bullish about future of the ball bonder, right? Let me give you example. I think, the whole world, the ball bonder represent about 65% of market share for total IC packaging solution, right? Whatever capacity increase, you know, in the world, it can be high-end, can be mid-end, can be low-end devices.
The ball bonder actually represents 65% of market share to packaging, you know, overall is IC. I think our ball bonder demand will continue to grow, actually because of, in addition to yearly semiconductor unit growth, we see the ball bonder continue to find new application to grow. I'll give you a few examples. I think we talked about the multi-die, right? This multi-die actually provide actually interconnect not only between a die to substrate, but also between die to die. Because of this, it's also, you know, kind of, you know, advanced packaging. You put, you know, a different maybe it's not advanced chiplet, but actually, you know, increase actually transition density, right? Increase actually also, you know, the capital intensity.
We really see the growth of this multi-die. The second application I am telling you is we are entering 5G, and they are multi-die actually in a package. Between a die to die, there may be a different kind of noise or interference to each other. You know, industries start to use our ball bonder actually to build a vertical wire, become a fence along the die and to prevent the interference and also reduce the noise between each other, right? We see this area also growing and ball bonder is you know receive this application.
The third one, I think we just mentioned, the TSV alone is very mature but very high cost and we are working with the industry leader in DRAM and try to use our innovative solution. The vertical wire actually connect between a stacked NAND instead of TSV, right? You know, later this year people start to use a ball bonder for innovative memory. What I'm trying to say is, you know, although the ball bonder is cyclical and so is the industry and what we believe is, ball bonder will continue to grow and every cycle, high and low, will become higher for the next cycle, right?
In the meantime, we try to speed up, you know, our new initiative as soon as possible to push our LUMINEX and also grow up advanced packaging. APS every year we grow it. I think, to answer your question, bottom line, we are seeing maybe second half of 2023, all these new initiatives will become much meaningful to offset the cyclicality of ball bonder. In the meantime, I think we are bullish on the ball bonder. I think the cycle will take longer right now because industry is more mature and the ball bonder starts to still contribute other than the unit growth, you know, need additional capacity, also have additional growth. In the area, like I mentioned, you know, the multi die and also shielding requirement and also other application in the memory.
Got it. Very helpful, Fusen Chen. The last question, in the past you mentioned TCB, thermal compression bonded revenues-
Right.
Could be around $40 million in 2022 and $80 million in 2023. Is that still a good number to use?
Actually, we are quite bullish on our TCB. TCB actually we have four markets, right? We focus on mobile. We also focus on, you know, Heterogeneous Integration. also I think in the CMOS imaging sensor and also Heterogeneous Integration. All these four applications actually will grow nicely. I think our goal right now is higher than originally we show during our investor day. I think also fluxless. Maybe I've mentioned a little bit about fluxless. We believe our TCB will continue to grow strongly, but one concern about TCB is the flux causes a contamination that will not be able to extend to very fine pitch like below like 20 microns.
Our fluxless, you know, capability is a very unique process that can actually provide very clean copper-to-copper surface. We believe it will extendable almost to like a 15 micron space, right? We actually already have a customer in the mobile, you know, also in a CMOS imaging sensor, silicon photonics for, you know, optical transceiver and also heterogeneous integration. I think, 2023, next year, we actually aiming, you know, close to $100 million. I think, the numbers should be, you know, what we show to investors to date, right? We do believe, TCB provide very significant growth opportunity for us for coming years.
Got it. Thank you very much, Fusen. Thanks, Lester.
Thank you. As a reminder, that's star one to be placed into question queue. Our next question is coming from Christian Schwab from Craig-Hallum. Your line is now live.
Hey, good morning, guys. Great quarter. Just a couple quick questions that haven't been asked. As we ramp the LUMINEX, should we expect that gross margins to be in line with the corporate average? Or is that going to be, you know, slightly better or slightly worse?
Hi, Christian, it's Lester. We expect LUMINEX, again, as we said previously, because it is an advanced display, one of our more advanced products. We believe that actually it'll be a little bit higher than the corporate margin. We think it's gonna be one of our higher margin products because we believe it's gonna be, you know, one of the leading products in the space. Also, I think there's great demand for the product in mini and micro LED.
Perfect. Can you remind us? I know you guys talked about this being a substantial market opportunity, you know, years ago by your bonding business. You know, given the, you know, acceleration and adoption of the Micro LED and your dialogue, I mean, can you give us a 3-4-year path about how big you think that business could be again?
Christian, you're talking about advanced display, right?
Yeah.
Okay.
Yep.
If you remember, I think, 2021 is the first year, you know, we enter this high volume production. In 2021 we guide, you know, $80 million we attribute. This year we also guide, you know, about $80 million, $80-$100 million. We believe by this year we will end, you know, close to the high end, you know, close to between $80-$100 million plus, close to the high side. The next year, I think, you know, we will have both revenue from PIXALUX and LUMINEX. Our goal is LUMINEX, I think, should be much higher in the future.
Because of, you know, we are still in a qualification stage, the qualification can take a long time, but we are quite bullish in our qualification should do very well. Second half and after that, I think, it can grow much faster, right? We will probably share more detail in the next few quarters, you know, when we have more detailed information.
Okay, great. Thank you for that clarity. And then as it relates to the aggressive buyback plan and then, you know, a slight follow-up to the partnership with PDF Solutions, do you think we're at a stage where, you know, there's limited, you know, M&A opportunities to create greater scale for the business through M&A versus just, you know, repurchasing stock? Or do you think the best way is, you know, doing what you're doing, invest aggressively in what you know and understand in a stock that's undervalued, as well as, you know, expand opportunities through partnerships with like PDF Solutions versus, you know, you know, maybe more consolidation in the back end, if you will?
Christian, I think we look at all three of the areas you talked about. I mean, as we've shown, you know, for capital return, we have a very attractive dividend which we increase every year, right? In addition to that, you know, on the share buyback, you know, we did on an opportunistic basis the open market repurchase, which, you know, we've also been pretty aggressive on. Obviously we did do the ASR of $150 million. We do believe that the stock is undervalued currently and definitely undervalued considering, you know, all the exciting growth factors that Fusen talked about.
As far as partnerships, we're always open to partnerships, whether it's PDF, other people, in terms of providing, you know, better solutions to our customers and also monetizing, you know, these solutions and hopefully these will become more sustainable. We don't actually think that, you know, M&A is not something we would look at. We've always looked at it and, you know, I'm not sure whether we look at it from a consolidation standpoint in the back end. I think what we look at is basically adjacency, particularly in things that again, we think there's a lot of opportunity in automotive and advanced display, along the supply chain for Mini LED and Micro LED. I think we're looking at a lot of different things there, as well as, you know, things that enhance our core technologies and basically accelerate our development.
That was shown, for example, in the Uniqarta acquisition, right? I think we consider both capital returns through share repurchase and dividend, definitely partnerships with people like PDF, but also we definitely are not saying that, you know, M&A is not something we would consider. We think definitely there are opportunities in M&A.
Great. Thank you for that clarity. No other questions. Congrats on a great quarter and a great outlook. Thank you.
Thank you, Christian.
Thank you. Next question is coming from David Duley from Steelhead. Your line is now live.
Yes, thanks for taking my question. Lester, I was wondering, you know, I think it was at your Analyst Day, you talked about having gross margins improved by about 500 basis points from, I believe, a 47% rate. We just saw that you achieved that gross margin target or rate in this current quarter. It was mainly driven by mix, you know, as you mentioned, a one-time true-up. I think when you were referring to the 500 basis points improvement of gross margins before, it was gonna be driven by, you know, lower cost and new products, particularly, I think, a new wire bonder product.
I was wondering if you could give us an update where you are with the new product initiatives, and if the new products continue to come out in the future, will gross margins perhaps grow higher than the 50% or 52% range?
Well, Dave, I think we said 51%-52%, and you're correct. You have a great memory. We did talk about the core business. I mean, Fusen's really driven cost reduction over the last couple of years. We're continuing to drive cost reduction down, which will help our margins. I think also we do have new products in our core business, both in ball bonder as well as wire bonder. These new generation products actually, you know, will have very attractive ASPs because with their UPH as well as their accuracy, the cost of ownership to our customers actually are falling. Therefore, we can maintain, you know, healthy ASPs. We look at, you know, cost reduction always. We built that in right from the beginning.
Fusen has really instilled a culture of cost savings from engineering all the way through supply chain. I think going forward, we do believe we will reach our long-term target of, you know, the gross margin in the 51%-52% range. That's both from our very strong core business through cost reduction and new products, as well as the new vectors in automotive, advanced display and advanced packaging.
Okay. A clarification question. What should the share count be? Maybe you mentioned this, and I might have missed it. What's the share count gonna be in Q2 and going forward?
David, you should use $60.1 million, sorry.
Okay. Excuse me. Fusen, as you mentioned, you know, we've talked about this in the past. There's, you know, you know, higher capital or wire bonder intensity with some of these heterogeneous packages and multi-chip modules.
Right.
I'm wondering if you could, you know, maybe update us on what you think, you know, versus just a standard die, how much more capital intensive you're seeing some of these newer advanced packages are than just standard parts?
Well, actually, we don't have this on hand right now, but you know, roughly, I think, we continue to see this multi die, the growth rate. Actually, all the growth majority are focused on a new area. I mentioned three new area. You know, you need to, like multi die, not only die to substrate, you also need to connect, die to die, so therefore increase, capital intensity. This a new shield environment, you know, after you bond connect to a substrate. You also need to build, a fence or cage around, you know, the die to make sure it's not interfere, you know, to next die. This also increase capital intensity, right? Continue to find application.
I think before, say, two or three years ago, our wire bonder may be dealing with like 1,000 wire, and right now we are doing about 2,000 wire, right? Actually, if you count it as a capital intensity, we low productivity increase probably almost double.
Okay. Could you just remind us of the mix in the wire bonder business between OSATs and IDMs, and what would you expect that mix to look like in the back half of this calendar year?
Well, Dave, I mean, the mix between IDM and OSAT does shift from quarter to quarter, right? So I mean, it's been running for ball bonder, sorry, the core business. I think the core business, you know, in the last couple of quarters, because of the huge ramp in capacity, and as you know, when things ramp based on capacity, the OSAT tends to be, you know, more active because they are generally, you know, where customers go when they need immediate capacity, right? So that was close to, I would say almost, 90% OSAT, 10% IDM. In the most recent quarter, Q2, it shifted a bit. I think it's closer now to about 75/25 in terms of OSAT and IDM.
The IDMs now have become much more active, particularly again, as the automotive business is very strong, as you know, and automotive business actually is quite focused on the IDMs.
Also, David, to add to it, I think we have a very diversified customers in both OSAT and the IDM. Sometimes I think some OSAT probably have enough capacity. Not necessarily all OSAT has, you know, a full capacity, right? I think we have a pretty good relationship with all customers and we work with the customers and especially I think our ball bonder, in my opinion, is reaching to another, you know, cycle. I think our next cycle, we believe, will be longer. Ball bonder, on top of unit growth, I think will also grow with the special application I mentioned, like a multi-die, the niche requirement, and potentially can be used for the memory, not only for the NAND, which we have very, very high market shares.
I think DRAM will still have much room to go to gain the market shares.
Okay. Final question from me is, you talked about, you know, I think I see unit volumes getting a bit better in the back half of the calendar year. I was kinda curious how you might be looking at this as, you know, I guess it was my understanding in the middle of this year, you kinda have the 5 nanometer transition, you know, at the big foundry in Taiwan, and that's definitely gonna drive higher units. But I was under the impression a lot of this trailing-edge capacity wasn't gonna come online till early next year. What's your view of both the, you know, the kind of the front-end, you know, advanced capacity and the trailing capacity and when it will come online?
I'm imagining that the trailing edge capacity is more relevant for you as far as a wire bonder opportunity, but maybe not. If you could elaborate.
That's correct. I think, David, I think you are right. I think I'll give an example. I think ball bonder continue to be extend, right? Even at 6 nanometer, I think a new application is gonna be a big application in the mobile space. So I think a lot of people believe ball bonder actually is a very old technology. But I can just tell you, there's a lot of very sophisticated technology over there. It's continuing to extend because of ball bonder, wire bonder is the most effective for interconnect, right? So we believe a lot of people believe 20 nanometer but will be more for chiplet, but actually continue to extend. People is actively working on the 6 nanometer.
Might not be high volume production by end of this year, but for sure, you know, the volume will come quickly.
Thank you.
Thank you. We've reached the end of our question and answer session. I'd like to turn the floor back over to Joe for any further closing comments.
No, no, no.
Thank you, Kevin. Thank you all for joining today's call. Over the coming months, we will be presenting at several virtual and in-person investor conferences in New York and San Francisco. As always, please feel free to follow up directly with any additional questions. Have a great day, everyone.
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