[Company Insight] Hanmi Semiconductor, Leading Player in Equipment Industry... Top Global Competitiveness

President-elect Yoon Suk-yeol emphasized the importance of the semiconductor industry, sparking momentum within the related sectors. Considering the economic significance of the semiconductor industry and supply chain security, the Presidential Transition Committee announced that it is reviewing a ‘Semiconductor Super-gap Strategy.’ The government plans to actively support semiconductor companies facing difficulties. The key tasks mentioned by the Transition Committee include resolving labor shortages, fostering the system semiconductor industry through foundry investments and promoting the growth of excellent fabless companies, easing regulations on new and expanded factory construction, strengthening research and development (R&D) incentives, and protecting advanced technologies. Accordingly, Asia Economy analyzed Hanmi Semiconductor and Tess, semiconductor equipment manufacturing companies expected to benefit.

[Asia Economy Reporter Park Hyung-soo] Hanmi Semiconductor, a semiconductor equipment developer, received the ‘$200 Million Export Tower’ award last year. It took 11 years since surpassing $100 million in exports in 2010 for its export volume to double. Considering the ongoing trade disputes between the U.S. and China and the global economic downturn due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Hanmi Semiconductor’s achievements are significant. Over the past decade, the export ratio of Hanmi Semiconductor’s total sales has averaged over 77%. Last year, Hanmi Semiconductor achieved its highest performance since its establishment, recording sales of 373.2 billion KRW and operating profit of 122.4 billion KRW, up 45% and 84% respectively from the previous year. Net profit also increased by 108% to 104.4 billion KRW during the same period.

Kwok Dong-shin, Vice Chairman of Hanmi Semiconductor, said, "This is the result of anticipating large-scale investments by global semiconductor companies and expansions by semiconductor outsourcing assembly and test (OSAT) companies and investing ahead of time."

Founded in 1980, Hanmi Semiconductor has established vertically integrated production facilities applying its own technology, covering design, manufacturing, assembly, inspection, and testing. It has secured global competitiveness in the semiconductor industry and supplies equipment to major overseas semiconductor manufacturers. Hanmi Semiconductor specializes in semiconductor back-end process equipment, with its main equipment, Vision Placement equipment, performing essential packaging processes such as sawing, cleaning, drying, 3D vision inspection, sorting, and stacking of semiconductor packages. It holds the number one market share worldwide.

In June last year, Hanmi Semiconductor succeeded in domestic production of the micro ‘Saw (SAW)’ module, a semiconductor package sawing module, for the first time in Korea. Hanmi Semiconductor developed dual-chuck micro saw equipment for semiconductor packages, which had previously been entirely imported. The ultra-precision sawing equipment module is a core part of Vision Placement packages, with Japan’s Disco Corporation monopolizing the global market. Disco’s dicing saw equipment accounts for 30-40% of the Vision Placement equipment price, making it a key module. Hanmi Semiconductor’s successful internalization reduced costs and enabled quick responses to customer orders. While customers had to wait 7-8 months to receive Vision Placement equipment equipped with Disco’s equipment, those with Hanmi Semiconductor’s micro saw can be delivered in 3-4 months. Moreover, the price is lower, allowing rapid market penetration.

Hanmi Semiconductor’s ‘TSV TC Bonder,’ a thermal compression bonding equipment essential for producing high-bandwidth memory semiconductors (HBM) that connect wafers to enable 3D semiconductor structures, and electromagnetic interference (EMI) shielding equipment are also considered its star products. In 2017, Hanmi Semiconductor jointly developed the TSV TC Bonder with SK Hynix. It launched a flip-chip bonder that bonds semiconductor chips using the flip-chip method instead of the traditional wire bonding method. The sales proportion of bonder equipment is expected to gradually increase. Flip-chip bonding is a packaging bonding method that appears after lead frame packaging and is gaining attention as a high-growth IC packaging method.

EMI shields emerged to block electromagnetic interference due to concerns about device interference and human health hazards. The front market includes small IT devices related to the Internet of Things (IoT), such as wearable devices and wireless earphones. The market is growing due to the miniaturization and light-weighting of electronic devices, the emergence of 5G high-frequency environments, and the increasing need to block electromagnetic waves and noise in various device-to-device communications in the IoT era.

Along with improving performance, Hanmi Semiconductor continues shareholder-friendly policies to enhance shareholder value. On the 18th of last month, it held the 42nd regular shareholders’ meeting and approved a stock split proposal. The face value of shares will be split from 200 KRW to 100 KRW to increase the number of circulating shares and activate trading. Additionally, it decided to pay a cash dividend of 600 KRW per common share. The total dividend amount is 29.7 billion KRW, a 50% increase from 19.7 billion KRW the previous year.

Hana Financial Investment estimates that Hanmi Semiconductor will achieve sales of 429.1 billion KRW and operating profit of 143.3 billion KRW this year, representing increases of 15% and 17% respectively from last year. Kim Kyung-min, a researcher at Hana Financial Investment, predicted, "The customer base will diversify from semiconductor back-end service customers to semiconductor package substrate customers, and the contribution of EMI shield and bonding equipment sales will increase."

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