Nextin aims to compete with KLA, CEO says – THE ELEC, Korea Electronics Industry Media
Nextin will challenge KLA in the global semiconductor inspection equipment market, the CEO of the South Korean company said on Thursday.
CEO Tae Hoon Park said the company will strengthen its technology to compete with KLA, the US company that dominates in dark-field inspection equipment. In South Korea, KLA and Hitachi of Japan each own half the market.
Nextin will develop 3D inspection equipment for all semiconductor production process based on its 2D inspection equipment technology, the company said at its online conference.
Nextin was founded in 2010 and develops inspection equipment that detects pattern defects that can happen during semiconductor processes from exposure, etching, thin film to deposition. Pattern inspection equipment are divided into bright-field and dark-field ones.
Nextin entered the dark-field equipment market and launched its 2D wafer pattern defection inspection equipment the Aegis in 2014.
Nextin began supplying the equipment to SK Hynix in 2016. It won Samsung as a client last year. This year, it has supplied its goods to 3D NAND Flash maker YMTC and DRAM maker JHICC of China. It also won a new client that works on foundry using 200mm wafers.
The company was also developing bright-field equipment, which accounts for over 60% of all optical inspection equipment.
More and more semiconductor companies are applying 3D technology such as FinFET on chips. Nextin collaborated with a US logic chip company to develop its bright-field equipment called Iris. The company plans to rollout the equipment in 2023.
Nextin plans to issue 320,000 new shares in its IPO. It is hoping for a share offering price between 61,500 won to 75,400 won. It will secure between 19.7 billion won to 24.1 billion won in funding. It plans to list on KOSDAQ within October. KB Securities is underwriting the deal. Nextin plans to invest half the secured funds from the IPO in research and development.
The company posted 9.3 billion won in sales, operating loss of 1.9 billion won and net loss of 2.6 billion won in 2019. However, for the first half of 2020, it marked 13.7 billion won in sales, 2.5 billion won in operating profit and 2.1 billion won in net profit and turned to the black.
The company expects sales of 49.8 billion won, operating profits of 19 billion won and net income of 15.7 billion won for the full year of 2020.
