Greetings, and welcome to the Kulicke & Soffa 2022 Third Fiscal Quarter Results Call. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. A brief Q&A session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone requires 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 introduce your host, Joseph Elgindy, Senior Vice President and Senior Director, Investor Relations for Kulicke & Soffa. Joseph, you may begin.
Thank you. Welcome everyone to Kulicke and Soffa's fiscal third quarter 2022 conference call. Fusen Chen, President and Chief Executive Officer, and Lester Wong, Chief Financial Officer, are both also joining on today's call. 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 and 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. Today I would like to provide an update on the progress and the status of our key growth initiative around advanced packaging, advanced display, electronic assembly and automotive. These initiatives are progressing well and provide upside potential to our long-term financial targets. Before discussing these growth specific opportunities, I wanted to step back and discuss the broader macro and the industry environment. As we have discussed last quarters, the industry continued to be constrained by supply chain challenges, largely around wafer capacity, which soften the near-term rate of semiconductor assembly expansion. In addition to these known industry challenges, which we have explained on previous calls, we also face an increasingly dynamic macro environment. Regional COVID lockdowns and the logistical challenge are continuing. Broader inflation, consumer confidence trend and the wafer fabrication equipment forecast are now also impacting our near-term outlook.
Although not unique to K&S, consumption of consumer goods such as smartphone, PC and general electronics play a significant role in impacting semiconductor growth rate in the near term. While we do not yet have clear visibility into fiscal 2023, we intend on providing additional detail and a longer-term outlook during our upcoming November earnings call. However, during today's call, Lester will provide additional commentary that highlights our cash flow and the profitability improvement over the past few years and the expectation over the coming quarters. At this point, I would like to provide an update to our strategic execution and progress supporting the broader trend in advanced packaging, advanced display, electronic assembly and automotive. At a high level, our global research, development, procurement and business team continue to be very engaged supporting several exciting opportunities with top customers.
We have developed several enabling system and our growing base of customer engagement serves as a testament to our competitiveness, which imply upside to our long-term financial expectations. Within advanced packaging, our dedicated solutions are currently running 35% higher for FY 2022 than expectations during our investor day. Specifically, our thermal compression system are very unique and feature-rich relative to alternatives. I'm pleased to announce we have secured purchase order totaling approximately $80 million with delivery date over the coming 18 months. It is important to know that our leading thermal compression solutions are being adopted by a broad set of customers, including integrated device manufacturers, OSATs, and also OEMs. As explained in detail last quarters, market opportunity go beyond next-generation heterogeneous applications. Thermal compression is also being adopted in key markets such as mobile sensing, mobile application processor and silicon photonics.
We remain very focused and continue to aggressively take shares and increase our presence within this growing opportunity set. Additionally, a material portion of our high volume assembly solution are also benefiting from broadening adoption of multi-chip module and the System-in-Package applications. These applications, which provide greater transistor density at the package level, are increasing the capital intensity of assembly, positively impacting long-term growth rate of the board, which in the ATS businesses. Ball and wedge bonding continue to represent nearly 80% of total semiconductor packages and offer compelling production benefit that support the increasing value of the assembly process. We have clear leadership position across this sizable growing market, especially within the most complex applications. Ultimately, this growing capital intensity has added a new layer of technology-driven growth and also increased the need for new product feature and the capability which will continue to enhance profitability.
Our progress, strategies, and ability to enhance gross margin highlight our value contribution within this evolving semiconductor market. Next, I wanted to also provide an update to our growing opportunity within the emerging advanced display market. Since 2017, we have developed enabling innovation, which extends the power efficiency, performance, and the manufacturing cost of these key emerging display technologies. Advanced display is a meaningful high-growth market opportunity where we continue to be very engaged with several key customers and continue to pursue multi-pronged approach, supporting new application within backlighting, but also within the direct-view and the micro LED opportunity. We continue to expand our advanced display install base, pursue multiple LUMINEX engagements while making ongoing progress across several customer development initiatives.
We have already demonstrated a clear leadership and the first-mover position in advanced display, are engaged with approximately 10 high potential customers and look forward to outperforming our long-term target. Ongoing customer engagement, qualification, and acceptance remain our key priority area over the next couple of 12 months. In addition to intimate involvement in this long-term technology transition, which expand our semiconductor and the display opportunity, we are also extending our presence in both electronic assembly and the automotive market. Turning to electronic assembly, our largest total addressable market opportunity. Our competitive solution currently support high reliability automotive System-in-Package and the memory application where alone represents only a small portion of our total addressable market.
This creates a fairly significant prospective market opportunity, which we have been pursuing through development of a disruptive SMT system, which is expected to ramp toward the end of our fiscal 2023, and will accelerate share gain over the coming years. Finally, within automotive, we continue to expand our solutions supporting the electric and autonomous vehicle transition across our growing base of OEM customers. K&S has a long-established position within several automotive markets, and we remain very involved in this exciting long-term market evolution. The auto transition driving electric and autonomous adoption are demanding more power control, power distribution, and power storage application, which directly benefit our competitive wedge, electronic assembly, and the battery assembly solution. Turning to June quarter business result, we generate a revenue of $372.1 million and a non-GAAP earnings per share of $2.09.
Capital equipment remained flat at 87% of total revenue. We experienced strong demand across end markets during the June quarter. General Semiconductor increased roughly 12% sequentially due to strength in ball and wedge applications. Demand strengthened sequentially for our dedicated advanced packaging solution, including thermal compression, wafer-level bonding, and the lithography system. Within LED, similar to last quarter, over 80% of LED sales supported our growing advanced display opportunity. At this point, we are comfortably within our four-year expectation on advanced display contribution and look forward to growing this business over the coming years. Auto and industrial remain very strong across our product line and has sequentially strengthened within our growing power semiconductor application. As mentioned earlier, we remain very focused, positioned to support the long-term growth opportunity of the automotive market.
Finally, memory comes in strong for our core NAND-based solution, which we support across all major memory customers. We are also very focused on delivering new DRAM assembly solution over the coming years. In summary, our progress on new growth initiatives and the customer engagement remains on track and provide upside to our long-term financial target. Effort to expand our semi market while directly participating in fundamental technology change remains a high priority throughout the organization. As stated earlier, there are additional macro and industry risks we did not previously anticipate and expect to provide greater detail to our outlook over the coming quarters. Our ability to succeed in development and the customer engagement near term will enhance our visibility into fiscal 2023, while providing upside potential to our existing long-term financial targets. 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, we continue to remain very focused on mid and long-term growth prospects by executing on our internal development goals, maintaining our pace of customer development engagement, while actively returning value directly to shareholders through our growing dividend and aggressive repurchase programs. It's also very important to remind callers today that our financial performance has already improved dramatically due to several technology changes, which reduce our reliance on annual capacity expansion. In parallel, we have continued to strategically expand our served market. During the June quarter, we generated revenues of $372.1 million and very strong gross margins of 51.2%, up by over 500 basis points year-on-year.
The strong gross margin performance highlights our consistent operational efficiency and improving product mix, and also highlights our incremental value add to the industry. Non-GAAP operating expenses during the quarter came in better than expectations due to a $4.5 million foreign exchange gain. Tax expense for the quarter came in at $5.2 million, significantly better than expectations. This favorable benefit was driven by a partial release of a valuation allowance previously recorded against a net deferred tax asset. This favorable benefit is directly related to the success and outlook of our advanced display solutions. Non-GAAP net income for the June quarter was $125.1 million, representing a very strong non-GAAP net margin of 33.6% and non-GAAP EPS of $2.09. Turning to the balance sheet.
Days of accounts receivable decreased slightly from 86 to 85 days. Days of inventory increased from 104 to 107 days, and days of accounts payable remained flat at 49 days. Over the past four quarters, we have generated $380 million of free cash flow, highlighting our longer term potential. During the June quarter alone, we generated free cash flow of $99.7 million and closed the quarter with a net cash balance of $471.7 million. During the recent March quarter, we announced the accelerated repurchase program and deployed $146.2 million in repurchases. During the June quarter, we completed the accelerated repurchase program and reinitiated our open market program. We deployed a total of $61.1 million to both programs in the June quarter.
At the end of the June quarter, we had just over $300 million remaining under our repurchase authorization and continue to manage an active, price-dependent open market approach. This remaining repurchase authorization, combined with our growing dividend yield, provide consistency and value creation opportunities at the share level. For the September quarter, in line with Fusen's comments regarding softening macro and industry environments, we anticipate revenue of approximately $280 million ± $20 million. Gross margins are expected to reduce to 47% ± 50 basis points due to additional expediting fees, near-term facility resizing effects, and also higher than expected inflation. Non-GAAP operating expenses is anticipated to be approximately $70 million ± 2%, and non-GAAP EPS to be $0.93 ± 10%.
While we do not yet have comprehensive visibility into fiscal year 2023, we expect the September quarter guide should be comparable to our average quarterly run rate through fiscal 2023. At this level, non-GAAP EPS of over $3.50 is achievable. As a comparison, this will represent approximately 7.5 times the non-GAAP EPS generated during fiscal year 2019. As the industry recovers and we expand our served available markets beyond fiscal 2023, we expect to exceed our recent fiscal 2021 and 2022 performance. It remains a very exciting time for the company as we have significantly broadened our market access and remain intimately involved with fundamental technology changes across the semiconductor, advanced display, electronic assembly, and automotive markets.
Our core business evolved in a very positive way over the prior two years, increasing our resilience to industry cyclicality significantly. Near term, the entire organization remains extremely focused on executing our multifaceted growth strategy and maintaining our emerging leadership position within these high-growth, technology-driven opportunities. Over the near term, expanding customer engagement, winning qualifications, and recognizing revenue are top priorities for the team. Our ability to execute on these priorities over the coming quarters is critical to enhancing our longer term visibility and financial outlook. While there are some near-term challenges due to macroeconomic environment, we strongly believe we are well positioned to take advantage of major technology changes, which will start to pay dividends in the second half of fiscal 2023 and beyond. This concludes our prepared comments. Operator, please open the call for questions.
Certainly. We'll now be conducting a Q&A session. If you'd like to be placed in the 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 pull for questions. Our first question is coming from Krish Sankar from Cowen. Your line is now live.
Yeah. Hi. Thanks for taking my question. I actually have a few of them. First one, Lester, I just wanted to clarify, did you say FY 2023 quarter should be similar to September quarter revenue run rate?
No, I didn't say that. What I said was, as Fusen indicated, Krish, you know, given the volatility uncertainty in the market right now, we are not in a position to call FY 2023. We'll provide more details in our November call. What I did say is that if FY 2023 was at the same run rate as Q4, we would generate EPS of $3.50, which shows the company is actually very profitable, even at a lower revenue level, much more profitable than the last down cycle.
Got it. That's very helpful. Couple other questions. I just wanted to check, you know, you guys highlighted the weaknesses due to macro concerns. You know, BE Semiconductor highlighted that some of the Chinese OSATs are also slowing. I'm kinda curious, have you seen any weakness in China? And what percentage of sales was China for you?
Krish, are you asking if OSAT in China also slowing down?
Yeah. What percentage of sales for you is from China?
Okay. I think it's well-known that macroeconomic factor impacting the consumer demand. That causes short period of a capacity digestion for some of our customers. Of course, our OSAT is a big part of that. On top of that, I think the China LED also slowing. This is two areas we are seeing a slowing down. Maybe last area is we still see spotty supply chain challenge that causes a bottleneck for our customer. Right? If the weakness, I think, in this area and the capacity digestion period of time for us, we are seeing, you know, maybe about two quarters. Beyond that, we are quite optimistic about the strengths coming back second half of 2023.
In the meantime, we also anticipate to generate strong cash flow, even together with this, very short period over seven periods.
Got it.
Krish, did you ask what the percentage of revenue in China was?
Yeah. Yeah.
It's 52%, same as the previous quarter.
Okay. Got it. There's two quick housekeeping questions, Lester. You guys didn't mention a backlog. Can you just tell us what the backlog is, and what is the lead time for wire bonders today?
Well, Krish, I actually, you know, we actually don't think backlog is a very good indicator for our investors in terms of looking forward, in terms of different forward-looking, particularly now that we give long-term guidance. The reason is that backlog can be a little bit confusing because different people use different definition of backlogs. For example, a lot of people use backlog in terms of just the POs they have. Our definition of backlog is actually the POs we have with a specific determined delivery date. We also have POs, obviously, that do not have a specific delivery date, which we don't put into backlog. We don't think backlog is actually a very good metric for us. In any event, for the backlog, the backlog has been pretty consistent in terms of the variation.
Over the last four quarters or so, each quarter-over-quarter, has probably reduced about 10%. Again, we don't think backlog is a great indicator, and that's why we didn't include it anymore. I think also the final point is that a lot, as you know, Krish, a lot of our U.S.-listed peers don't provide backlog information, or they only do it during the annual report on the 10-K level. To answer your question, lead times now is a little bit over three months.
Got it. Thank you very much, Lester and Fusen. Thank you.
Great. The next question is coming from Craig Ellis from B. Riley Securities. Your line is now live.
Yeah, thanks for taking the question. Fusen, really appreciate the deep dive on the market expansion initiatives to kick things off. I wanted to follow up just on some of the order dynamics and the implications for the business, given what you're seeing in the order book. It looks like the business is returning to more typical seasonality with revenues being down meaningfully in fiscal fourth quarter. The question is this: as you look beyond that to the fiscal first quarter, one, what is the historic range for seasonal performance of the business? Related to that, how would investors reasonably expect the business to perform versus historic seasonality this year?
Craig, actually, I don't think it's a seasonality issue. I think what we are facing is the whole industry. The customer demand actually is impacted by macro, global macro issue, right? You can see from a lot of customer products. Actually, this is slowdown. Looks like it's quite dramatic in the recent months. It might not be seasonality. I think it's softness, capacity digestion to actually reflect on this demand issue. We do believe this probably will last about two quarters and a maximum three quarters. Our second half, we expect Asian market should pick up, you know, globally, you know, for the whole industry.
Got it. Excuse me, just a clarification with regard to the very strong gross margin performance in the quarter, another above guidance result. Lester, what were the specific factors that caused gross margin to exceed initial guidance and what was their relative contribution?
Well, I think, Greg, what caused gross margin to be very strong in the quarter is, I think as usual, is our product mix, right? We had higher contribution from our advanced packaging business unit, as well as our wedge bonder business unit, which did very well during that quarter. We also have that for Liteq. We had the machine that the one sale, which came in a very high margin because it's been expensed before. I think it's mainly product mix that caused the margin to be higher than anticipated.
Got it. Nice work on that. Thanks, guys. Appreciate it.
Thank you. Next question is coming from Charles Shi from Needham & Company. Your line is now live.
Hey, hi, Fusen and Lester. Thank you for taking my questions. Fusen, I wanna go back to your comment on capacity digestion. Did I hear you think it's gonna last about two quarters and second half of your fiscal or calendar 2023, you think the demand is gonna pick up? Also, tying to this same question. I think in September last year, you were expecting $1.5 billion average revenue through 2020 for 2025. Kind of forgot. What is 2023 shaping up relative to that $1.5 billion average revenue guide? Thank you.
Okay. Charles, I think I remember in the Investor Day, that's what we say. I think our 2020 revenue was $632 million, if I remember correct. 2021, I think, is in the middle of our Investor Day. We didn't finish that yet. I say it's $1.52 billion. We just say 2022, we feel like will be as good, right? As good, that means it's also toward $1.5 billion. We also say average over next few years will be $1.5 billion. At this moment, I think we see actually macro slowdown and causing inventory correction and the capacity digestion. This will last maybe two to three quarters.
With this, you know, unexpected phenomena, and we do expect right now, first half, maybe it will be lower and pick up in the second half. To reach $1.5 billion probably will not, you know, be quite possible. But we do believe, with 2024, we are looking for very, very strong 2024 with a lot of new products. Even at this moment, even there's a correction happen, I think 2024 even will push even higher for the core business. We still have a chance, you know, to stick with what we say the next few years. 2021 is $1.5 billion. 2022, you know, 2025, $1.5 billion.
Next couple of years, I think average, we can be still higher than $1.5 billion. I hope I answered your questions.
Yes. Thank you for the color. Maybe a second question. I understand that for your wire bonded business, maybe the visibility is a little bit not as great as, let's say, three to six months ago because of macro. The advanced display side, I would assume that things are more under your control, because you have a lead in that market and your customers are probably engaging with you over longer term. Any thoughts on what your advanced display outlook for fiscal 2023? Are you going to exceed the level of fiscal 2022? Adding on top of that, I would want to see if you have any comment on recent market chatters that your Apple customer seems to be moving to OLED for their premium product lines around 2024, which could mean mini LED may be displaced. Are you hearing anything like that? Thank you.
Okay. Let me talk about our advanced display. We entered this market in FY 2019. Up to date, I think, cumulatively, we generate over $200 million in advanced display. This is including, like, FY 2022. You know, we expect the revenue for advanced display is going to be higher than $90 million. For 2023, it's a year we call qualification and adoption year for the LUMINEX. Because of qualification, we will add, you know, not high volume business, but we do expect, in 2023, over $100 million of sales as we continue to drive LUMINEX qualification for advanced display revenue through 2023. We do expect significant growth in FY 2024. I don't know if I answered your question.
Okay. The second question is OLED compared to micro and mini LED. I can tell you, I think, you know, a lot of people try to make a micro LED and mini LED work, and with a lot of effort from throughout the whole industry chain. The reason is that there are a lot of LCD capacity is there, and people realize they want to reuse it, right? Effort is there, the commitment is there, forecast, I think, is there. The growth rate, I think year by year by analysts, I think is really still shows significant growth. Customers can, at a certain point, you know, actually have a dual strategy. I can tell you know, all the customers we are working on have very, very strong commitment.
All the customer have a strong commitment in this mini LED and micro LED.
Thank you very much. I'll go back to the queue. Thanks.
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 Capital Group. Your line is now live.
Hey, good morning, guys. Just for a little bit further clarity, you know, on the commentary of two to three quarters of digestion. Do you believe the baseline of the business during this digestion period, you know, falls below the kind of the 21 baseline of $900 million, you know, over the course of, you know, the next year? Or do you see it greater than that?
Christian Schwab, I think we are really confident on the long-term growth prospect for the whole industry. Since this capacity digestion and the macro demand inflation or this macro factor has really recently started to impact the whole industry. That's why I think Lester Wong has is not assumption, actually, it's an example. I think it's not unreasonable assumption since we are gonna see first half is going to be lower because of compared to our previous few quarters. This quarter is lower, and we actually expect this will not bounce back right away. We hope two quarter and maximum we think is three quarters.
Compared to $1.5 billion average, we think, you know, you pick up very long way, of course, it's not going to be flat. If you use the number we just guided and along the four quarters is of course will be between $1 billion-$1.5 billion, right? That's what we see and try to be realistic. I think $1.5 billion probably will be difficult, but we do believe our second half will pick up and we will still generate very healthy, you know, cash flow for the company and the investor.
Great. What do you think, you know, utilization is at your leading OSATs today, you know, and what would it have to return to for more aggressive capacity additions?
Christian, utilization right now is running pretty flat around 80%, but then you do have, you know, pockets both in terms of end market, obviously automotive, strong end market and also in terms of regionally, I think China because of the rolling COVID issues are a little bit lower. As far as what we need it to be, I think, you know, historically, if it's above 80% and the mid-80s, I think that was when basically there's capacity expansion. But again, these are, as you know, very dynamic and volatile environment. Right now, I think everyone's trying to figure out exactly how the next couple of quarters are gonna play out. But we do believe, as Fusen said, the second half of FY 2022 will be much stronger.
Great. Thank you. No other questions.
Thank you. Next question is coming from David Duley from Steelhead Securities. Your line is now live.
Yep. Thanks for taking my questions. Could you just update us on, you gave some pretty good detail about what's left in the buyback. Going forward, could you just detail what the plan is for the buyback in the September quarter and going forward? Will you be adding to it? That's the first question.
Okay. Dave, I think we indicated we have about $309 million left at the end of the quarter in our authorization. As you know, we did the ASR, we finished that, and we reinitiated our OMR program. I think we will continue to aggressively utilize our OMR program to support the stock as we believe it is undervalued. Again, we don't provide specific guidance, but I think going forward we will continue to utilize our OMR program.
The guidance you gave for the September quarter, what would you guess would be the cash flow from operations based on that guidance?
I would say cash flow from that would be probably similar to the EPS.
Okay. Fusen, you gave us a lot of detail about, I think, the ramp up in the thermal compression bond business. Could you just review again? You mentioned I think three or four applications. It sounds like it's a pretty broad-based ramp. If you could just review some of the bigger applications for the thermal compression bonder going forward. If you could just remind us what your revenue targets are, perhaps in this fiscal year and next fiscal year.
Sure. Actually we are quite proud and also show a lot of confidence on this product. I think next few years we'll see a significant growth. Our product actually address a variety of customer and application. This including 3D sensing and silicon photonics, and also mobile, you know, silicon mobile logic, and also chiplet heterogeneous application. Right? We cover a lot of customer and more and more people actually come to us. We do believe our heterogeneous integration is going to grow significantly. The $80 million we mentioned is not only PO, it's a PO with delivery date, and you know, continue to grow. This $80 million largely will be shipped within FY 2023.
The solution we have, I think, the fluxless TCB, we believe will be the mainstream interconnect, for future heterogeneous integration, down to a 20 micron pitch. Right? Of course, smaller than 20 micron pitch, there will be, some niche, product architectures and also other technology. We are quite bullish, I think, you know, for the heterogeneous integration for the next, many years. I think our fluxless TCB should have a high volume and, we are working with, more and more customers. I think, I can probably give you a little bit, you know, update about the total advanced packaging, revenue. Like this quarter alone, we're talking about dedicated. I think, you know, different company have different, definition of advanced packaging.
Our dedicated advanced packaging, we're talking about our TCB, like thermal compression. We also have a high accuracy flip chip. This time we didn't talk about it, but it's picking up momentum. Maybe we'll update for the next couple of quarters. Also including advanced display and SIP, and also AT Premier. I think I mentioned in my script, we're talking of the vertical wire to replace TSV for the next couple of years. This is like AT Premier frame. All this together, I think this quarter we are $64.9 million. It did not include, you know, I call advanced ball bonder. Including advanced ball bonder, I think is about $130 million for this quarter. I see this area as our growth area.
We are quite confident your company will grow.
Okay. Just as a clarification, the weakness you're seeing in the September quarter, what end markets or product lines are you seeing weakness in September versus June?
Mainly I think it's really ball bonder. If you hear the script I mentioned, I think every year right now is about 1 trillion, you know, finished die, you know, finished wafer and you cut it, you know, you have about 1 trillion die. Need to have a package. Actually, 80% of total, this is 1 trillion die. The packaging measure, I think majority actually is a ball bonder. So this explain why I think when the industry slow down, the ball bonder was impact first, right? Actually our wedge bonder actually is very, very strong because of, we actually will continue to be strong, I think it's auto-related and also power semiconductor also play a very important role. Right.
To answer your question, I think it's very easy. During the capacity digestion period, I think ball bonder is impacted. Again, you know, when the industry pick up, the ball bonder will be the first one. That's really the nature of the ball bonder. But we still see ball bonder every cycle will continue to grow because it's the easiest way to do the interconnect. This will represent the most high market shares for the whole semiconductor packaging measure. Right? We see a ball bonder. If you look at average, every cycle, we do believe every cycle ball bonder will continue to grow. We are seeing a new use of ball bonder.
For example, in the memory, we are working with a leading DRAM company to replace TSV. We see the early adoption, low volume production maybe in 2023. In the previous few quarters, I talk about multichip and the system chip. Every package, you know, the number of wire grow from 1,000 to 2,000. This is market expansion and the capacity expansion. Also I think, 5G, there's a lot of multiple bandwidth, either have a ball bonder to create the Faraday cage and isolation to prevent, you know, interference or next-die crosstalk. Ball bonder, I think or next week, next quarter, maybe in Q2, Q3, will be lower. But when it pick up, it will also pick up very, very fast.
Okay. Final question from me. Just curious, you know, you talk about a two-quarter inventory correction or two quarters of weakness. What gives you confidence? Is that your customers telling you that, or are you picking up on what TSMC has said on their conference call? Just kinda curious why, you know, can you monitor the customer's level of inventory? Why do you think it's just two quarters?
Well, they are from two ways. One is, of course, I talked to you. We actually, our sales team and, of course, we also reach out to our customers, and that was the indication, you know, to give us higher confidence that the second half will pick up. That's the first reason. The second reason, you know, there are multiple mature node technological capacity is going to finish construction, and they will start to need to put, you know, the capacity to doing packaging, right. I think just China alone, there are many. I actually don't have the number.
I think they are like close to a 30 mature node, you know, capacity will come up and the first one they need is going to be a ball bonder. Also historically, we see the weakness of the ball bonder is no more than four high quarters. If you see, I think our actually reached the peak probably two quarters ago, when we reached our $480 million. Actually, it was really not average real demand. I mentioned it was a lot of our customer need, you know, a hurry to put a capacity. Actually we quickly just pull it in. There was one quarter we reached a $480 million, one quarter we reached about $420 million.
Actually, you know, after that, ball bonder start to, you know, drop a little bit. But at this moment, we never see ball bonder lower than five quarter for us, right? With these two, we feel some confidence in our second half will be better.
Okay, thank you.
Thank you. Next question is coming from Hans Chung from D.A. Davidson. Your line is now live.
Hi, thank you for taking my question. First, I was wondering, what's the semiconductor unit growth for this year, based on your September quarter guidance and also what's your view on 2023?
Sorry, Hans, can you repeat that? You broke up a little bit.
Oh, sorry. Can you hear better now?
Yes.
My first question is just, what's the underlying assumption for semiconductor unit growth, based on our September quarter guidance? And then also what's your view on next year?
For FY 2022, I think we think it's about 10% unit growth for the year. I think for 2023, based on what we see and based on industry, you know, our experts, I think it'll be close to the normalized level. Normalized level is about 6.5% unit growth.
Okay. For the automotive segment. During the quarter, why the revenue coming down a little bit? Because I think across industry the automotive has been pretty strong. I mean, it's very strong across the supply chain, either it's a semi company or equipment guy. I'm just curious, what's the dynamic during the quarter for the automotive segment?
I think we came down just a little bit in the automotive segment, Hans, and I think a lot of it is just customer schedules. I think we had a very strong automotive business from our wedge bonder business, as Fusen said, and it still continues to be strong. I think for the ball bonder part of the automotive business, there's been some a little bit of shifting, maybe into the next quarter. I don't think the automobile business is soft. I think it's just maybe it came down a little bit.
Got it. Last one, just, do you have any update on the LUMINEX regarding any customer feedback or any new product qualification going on? Just any update on the LUMINEX?
We are actually engaging, you know, close to more than 10 high potential customers. We ship a few systems and are doing a qualification. Our goal actually in the next nine months to 12 months, we want to make sure we have, a few, you know, three to twofold. We hope to finish our qualification. From all we know, this is probably the most productive system is going to hit the market. If you know, to move, the display, big display, you know, from one place to the other place, you need to move about 25 million dies. Our speed actually is, much faster than, any competitor can claim and, can do.
We are quite optimistic, you know, about progress, and we'd like to finish the three qualification in next nine to 12 months. We have a goal, the whole advanced display to have a goal more than $100 million, and we believe it's achievable in 2023, right? If we do a 2023, the whole advanced display business since we introduced this segment of business after 2023 will be more than $300 million. We believe at 2024 will be even bigger than that.
Sorry, can I clarify? You say $300 million after fiscal 2023?
2022 actually is about $90 million. Year to date is about $200 million, right? Year to date is $200 million including 2022. 2022 is, we target, you know, greater than $90 million. We still have one quarter to go. That's a $200 million year to date. Cumulative, including 2023, we should be, you know, above $300 million. In 2024, we believe our advanced display will even grow with a higher rate.
Got it. Thank you.
Thank you. We've reached the end of our Q&A session. I'd like to turn the floor back over to Joe for any further closing comments.
Thanks, Kevin, and thank you all for joining today's call. Over the coming months, we will be presenting at several virtual and in-person investor conferences with D.A. Davidson, Needham, and Credit Suisse. As always, please feel free to follow up directly with any additional questions. This concludes today's call. Have a great day, everyone.