PETALING JAYA: UWC Bhd
’s front-end (FE) semiconductor business segment is set to drive growth, driven by rising demand for advanced chipmaking tools.
Hong Leong Investment Bank (HLIB) Research stated despite some headwinds at its customers level, UWC’s FE and back-end (BE) segments are set to gain from a steady pipeline of new product qualifications, even as global semicap spending trends remained fluid.
The research house forecasts UWC’s fourth quarter (ended July 31) of financial year 2025 earnings to hit RM14mil –RM16mil as the company experienced improvement in yields and defect rates for its FE customers.
“We expect this progress to bolster investor confidence in UWC’s ability to deliver strong FY26 earnings growth (up 96% on-year), supported by increased order flow from FE customers once production reliability at scale is proven.
Margin expansion should follow the volume ramp, underpinned by higher operating leverage, improved process efficiency and lower rework/defect costs,” the research house stated in its latest report on UWC.
HLIB Research said UWC’s BE segment could see a better showing in the second half of 2025 as its customer T saw a recovery in the memory segment which could lead to higher orders in the coming quarters.
“Looking ahead to 2026, customer T anticipated further programme ramps as high bandwidth memory suppliers add new test steps to improve device quality, which should expand the total addressable market for memory test equipment, potentially driving further order uplift for UWC,” HLIB Research stated.
To add to that, another of its major BE client, customer I, had seen a cash boost from investors which could improve the latter’s probability of medium-term recovery.
