GARCHING (dpa-AFX) - Semiconductor industry supplier Süss Microtec expects a surprisingly high level of revenue in the current year thanks to a record-high order backlog. According to CEO Burkhardt Frick, the bonder business in particular is expected to drive growth. This is benefiting from the strong capacity expansion in the industry for the production of chips for artificial intelligence (AI). The Management Board also expects the operating margin to improve this year. However, the shares of the SDax group fell in the morning after the good performance of the past few months.

Its price fell by around three percent to 38.35 euros in the morning. However, at its low of just over 15 euros last October, the share was still available for significantly less than half that price. A price rally then set in, leading to almost 42 euros at the beginning of March. Analyst Armin Kremser from DZ Bank pointed out that the management's sales forecast for 2024 is slightly above market estimates. However, higher costs for research, development and Group restructuring would stand in the way of a more significant increase in the margin.

Sales are expected to rise to between 340 and 370 million euros in the current year, as Süss announced in Garching near Munich on Wednesday. Following the previous year's figure of 304 million euros in continuing operations, analysts had previously only expected an average of 345 million euros. Suess Microtec had already presented initial key data on sales and profits at the end of February.

Suess supplies the chip industry with various machines for the production of semiconductors. The "temporary bonding" process in particular is currently generating a high volume of orders. In this process, a chip wafer - a silicon wafer - is temporarily fixed to a second wafer and then detached from it again after grinding. Süss also offers machines for connecting memory and logic chips. A leading contract manufacturer in Taiwan, for example, uses two systems from Suess for this purpose: the platform for temporary bonding and the UV projection scanner, according to the letter from the Management Board to shareholders.

Since the fall, Suess has been hiring more employees at its Hsinchu site in Taiwan to manufacture temporary bonders there. The world's largest contract manufacturer TSMC (Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company), which produces for electronics giants such as Apple, Nvidia, AMD and Intel, is also based in Hsinchu.

The Suess Management Board is aiming for an operating profit margin before interest and taxes of 10 to 12 percent this year, after reaching 9.1 percent in continuing operations in the previous year. Experts had predicted a figure in the upper half of the range for 2024.

The dividend for 2023 is expected to remain unchanged at 20 cents per share. After the decline in profits last year, experts had expected a lower payout. The net profit fell from 24.5 to 4.7 million euros. A loss in discontinued operations and costs in connection with the sale of the MicroOptics division, which Suess completed in January, weighed on this figure./men/stw/jha/