Pinetek, 3Q Operating Profit Turnaround... "Touchless, Large OLED, Foldable Phones 'Momentum'"

[Asia Economy Reporter Yoo Hyun-seok] FineTec has accelerated its new business ventures, including the development of the ‘Touchlesse (Touchless)’ untact system, and has entered a full-fledged turnaround by recording profits in both operating income and net income in the third quarter.

FineTec announced on the 16th that its consolidated operating profit for the third quarter of this year reached 3.1 billion KRW, an improvement of about 244% compared to the operating loss of 3.3 billion KRW in the second quarter. Net income for the same period also turned positive, recording 2.9 billion KRW. Sales grew about 66% quarter-on-quarter to 30.5 billion KRW, an 8% increase compared to the previous year.

Despite the prolonged global impact of COVID-19, this performance improvement is attributed to the strong performance of its core parts business and the visible results from new business ventures.

The parts business, which has been the company’s main focus since its establishment, is highly sensitive to market trend changes. When profitability in the display BLU (Back Light Unit) business deteriorated in the past, FineTec boldly discontinued the business and restructured its operations into a touch key-based business model through intensive structural improvements. Following the growth of the home appliance market after the COVID-19 pandemic, sales of its main product, the touch key, have steadily increased, and along with digitizers, the contribution to profitability improvement has continuously expanded, according to the company.

A company official explained, “Despite ongoing market uncertainties, our large OLED and secondary battery manufacturing equipment businesses, which we have continuously pursued through research and development, have successfully established themselves. Internally, we also focused on securing financial soundness through cost reduction, enabling us to achieve triple-digit growth of over 200% in both operating profit and net income compared to the previous quarter.”

Starting from the third quarter, FineTec succeeded in turning around both operating and net profits, raising expectations for further performance growth in the second half of the year. In particular, supported by the new business results such as the touchlesse system and large OLED bonding equipment, which have been continuously promoted since the end of last year, as well as the co-growth of existing businesses, stable growth is expected to continue into the fourth quarter.

FineTec’s large OLED manufacturing equipment, positioned as a new growth engine, is also showing visible results. Despite the reduction in front-end market investments by global companies due to the COVID-19 pandemic, FineTec has focused on research and development of large OLED manufacturing equipment since the end of 2019. In October, it succeeded in securing its first order for large OLED flexible bonding equipment using inkjet printing technology from Japan’s JOLED, gaining recognition for its technological capabilities. Additionally, the secondary battery manufacturing equipment business has successfully completed delivery of its initial orders, raising expectations for further order expansion.

A company official said, “In the fourth quarter, we expect not only an expansion of orders for the ‘foldable display bonding equipment,’ which FineTec is the world’s first to develop and exclusively hold in the equipment business sector, a core area of smartphone form factor changes, but also additional orders for ‘secondary battery manufacturing equipment’ following customer factory expansion plans. The parts business is also expected to see additional external growth through increased sales of existing businesses and the promotion of new businesses such as the ‘Touchlesse system.’”

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.