Building a high-potential, innovative portfolio

Financial Highlights

$ 0
Current stock price
$ 0 B
Current market cap
0 %
2016 - 2021 Rev. CAGR
0
P/E ratio
$ 0 m
FY2021 revenue
$ 0 m
FY2021 PBT
$ 0 m
FY2021 PAT
0 cents
Dividend per ordinary share

Pioneers in System Level Test

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Systems Installed
10000 +
Test Cells Deployed

Years of innovations

YEAR

2000

World’s first production system with pressure stimulus

YEAR

2002

Designing & delivering System Level Test

YEAR

2007

World’s first rotating probing system for motion sensors

YEAR

2018

World’s first 300mm Cryogenic Probe Station

A Leader in Test Innovation

AEM is a global provider of semiconductor test solutions. Our comprehensive semiconductor and electronics test solutions cover multiple stages of the testing process over various testing types, for full-stack test capabilities for advanced engineering to high-volume manufacturing.

The solutions we provide are customized and application specific to meet our customer’s application needs. We set ourselves to redefine test through our Test Cell Solutions Business and Instrumentation Business.

AEM has a global presence across Asia, Europe, and the United States. With manufacturing plants located in Singapore, Malaysia (Penang), Indonesia (Batam), Vietnam (Ho Chi Minh City), China (Suzhou), and Finland (Lieto), and a global network of engineering support, sales offices, associates, and distributors, we offer our customers a robust and resilient ecosystem of test innovation and support.
 
AEM Holdings Ltd. is listed on the main board of the Singapore Exchange (Reuters: AEM. SI; Bloomberg: AEM: SP). AEM’s head office is in Singapore.

Our Leadership

Non-Executive Chairman’s Message

Exiting 2021, the world was concerned about COVID’s newest variant Omicron, the supply chain disruptions caused by COVID, and inflation caused by tightening supply chains and massive financial quantitative easing. In a nutshell, all these risks are linked, and we had started to learn to live with them in addition to dealing with a higher interest rate environment and new rules of engagement to deal with the US-China technology bifurcation and trade tensions. 

As I write this message in early March 2022, we suddenly have the unknown unknowns of what the Russia and Ukraine conflict will bring. What 2021 taught us is that advancements in technology helped us deal with these shocks exponentially better. From AI used in vaccine development to the compute, communications, and encryption capabilities that allow digital and remote work, education, and living. The forward march of advanced technologies enabled by semiconductors has gathered steam across the world, and we expect AEM to play a role in developing the equipment that ensures the quality of such nextgeneration semiconductors as they get deployed in the cloud, 5G edge, smart devices, and cars.

One day, quantum computers will be able to even break blockchain encryption in minutes, and hopefully help us mitigate the unknown unknowns. AEM is on the march, and we are glad you are with us for the journey!

Living with COVID will require more advanced semiconductors to power the automation and digitalisation of the workplace, schools, factories, and transportation, in the cloud, at the edge, in our devices, and in our vehicles. These semiconductors will increasingly be based on advanced packaging solutions that incorporate multi-node and multi-mode chiplets tested to much higher quality standards than ever before.

At AEM, we have been working for the past several years on the next generation test solutions that go beyond the current structural and functional testing of semiconductor chips. We saw the need for software to be tightly integrated with the hardware and semiconductors that deliver new levels of mission-critical applications, where throughput, power efficiency, and latency matter.

Internally we coined the term Test 2.0, which incorporates application-specific testing that works with our customers’ data analytics capabilities, while addressing higher levels of customisation required in the test environment.

Looking around the bend, we are optimistic that the industry is adopting application-specific test methodologies as a part of their manufacturing process for advanced chips and chiplets.

AEM today is acknowledged by many of our customers as a global provider for semiconductor test solutions, a far cry from where we were even five years ago.

Over the years, we have reinvested in R&D and made several acquisitions globally, mainly for technology but also for responsive delivery. Since 2017, we have acquired seven technology companies to expand our core capabilities, with the latest being the acquisition of CEI Limited and a significant minority investment in ATECO Inc. in 2021. AEM’s focus on innovation and global entrepreneurial culture has enabled us to move quickly to meet our customers’ evolving needs. A good testament to our comprehensive solution offering was being selected as the system level test provider for a major memory IDM company in August 2021.

Additionally, competing on a global scale also requires an in-depth understanding of industry-wide challenges and bottlenecks. The pandemic has put massive pressure on supply chains as demand soared beyond production capacities for many components. I am pleased to note that our engineering and operations teams have performed very well under extremely challenging situations. We should also express thanks to many of our suppliers who worked tirelessly with our teams to ensure that any impact to our delivery commitments were contained.

As a Board, we understand that keeping our unique culture is fundamental to AEM’s continued success. The AEM culture is one of Resilience, Innovation, Sustainability and Entrepreneurship, or RISE in short. We look at Resilience to include the constant questioning of our business model amidst a globally competitive landscape. Sustainability to include the longevity of our organisation, employees, and our environment. Innovation and Entrepreneurship go hand-in-glove, and they embody the combination of competent risk-taking and willingness to pivot when needed.

At the start of 2021, I stepped down as Executive Chairman but kept involved in a Non-Executive Chairman role. 2021 was an exciting and challenging year at the same time where we ramped two new customer programmes into the headwinds of a global supply chain crunch.

I am confident that our leadership team of Chief Executive Officer Chandran Nair, President (AEM International) & Chief Technology Officer Samer Kabbani, Chief Financial Officer Leong Sook Han, and our bench of senior executives are steeped in our culture of global innovation, passion for our customers and stewards of stakeholder value, and will continue to make AEM a great business partner and business to be an owner of.

I would like to take this opportunity to express my heartfelt gratitude to all our shareholders who believed and have shown confidence in AEM throughout the years. I would also like to thank our three retiring board members, Adrian Chan, Basil Chan, and Lavi Lev, whose counsel have been invaluable over the years. A note of thanks also to our customers and suppliers who have extended their continued support as we collectively mitigated the COVID-related risks in our business.

Last but not least, I would like to thank our management and employees who went above and beyond to deliver on our commitments to our customers and remained steadfast in building our company to last beyond this COVID speed bump.

Loke Wai San

Non-Executive Chairman

CEO’s Message

Many of you have followed our journey and witnessed our transformation to become a global leader in testing innovation. AEM has continued to grow from strength to strength through the years. Today, we provide the best-in-class platforms and technologies in test and handling solutions for semiconductor and electronics companies worldwide. 

We extended our record-breaking results for the year ended 31 December 2021 (“FY2021”) with revenue of S$565.5 million, outperforming our FY2021 revenue guidance of between S$525.0 million to S$550.0 million. We delivered a profit before tax of S$111.1 million.

The results were driven by the strong uptake for our new-generation System Level Testing handlers, Burn-In Test handlers, related consumables, and the consolidation of CEI Limited, which was acquired in 1H2021.

In August 2021, we placed out 26.8 million shares to Temasek for a cash consideration of S$103.1 million. Coupled with our strong cash-generating business model, our cash and cash equivalents increased from S$134.8 million as of 31 December 2020 to S$216.2 million as of 31 December 2021. We are in a strong financial position to capitalise on the opportunities in the semiconductor industry and accelerate our growth.

In view of the strong set of financial results for the year, the Board has proposed a final dividend of 5.0 Singapore cents per share subject to shareholders’ approval at the forthcoming annual general meeting. Together with the interim dividend of 2.6 Singapore cents per share, the total dividend for FY2021 would amount to 7.6 Singapore cents per share.

The past year has seen continued growth in semiconductor devices used in data infrastructure, automotive, high-performance computing, mobile devices, and artificial intelligence. Growth in global demand, the fast-changing market needs, supply chain disruptions, and global chip shortage, had our teams at AEM double-up efforts to ensure reliability, on-time delivery, and tool availability for our customers.

Despite the challenging landscape, I'm proud to say that we continued to be recognised as a global leader in application-specific intelligent system test and handling solutions as our team has displayed exceptional resilience, agility, and commitment to deliver successful outcomes for our customers.

Expanding business footprint and R&D

In 2021, we expanded our footprint as we opened sales and application engineering offices in Shanghai, Hsinchu, Costa Rica, and San Diego. We also opened additional R&D centres in Penang and San Diego to enhance our technology capabilities. These new centres together with the existing R&D centres in Singapore, France, and Finland form the core of AEM's innovation efforts. These centres enable us to expand our portfolio of solutions spanning from Wafer Sort all the way to Final Module Test.

Growth via M&A

Through the years, AEM has made several significant acquisitions that have boosted the company's growth in various verticals and helped us diversify our product offerings and customer base. In 2021, AEM acquired CEI Limited; Enabling us to provide quick-turn, full-stack capability for our handler and tester solutions. In addition to acquiring CEI, we invested in a 43.15% stake in ATECO Inc., a South Korean company specialising in the design and development of memory test handler solutions. With the investment, we will be able to engage in joint R&D efforts with ATECO Inc. to offer advanced solutions to the memory market. Our acquisitions have given us customer diversity, manufacturing resilience, and increased our technology capabilities.

Success Stories

We are honoured to be recognised for our quality test solutions with various customer wins over the past year. An industry-leading memory integrated device manufacturer selected AEM as its System Level Test (SLT) Solution supplier, a win that reaffirmed our position in the industry.

With customer intimacy at the core, we understand our customers' challenges and partner with our customers closely to ensure their success. We are humbled to receive the Supplier Achievement Award in 2021 for the COVID-19 response category from the 2020 Intel Supplier Continuous Quality Improvement (SCQI) Program Award.

Our deep technical engagements with many of the top semiconductor companies see us expanding our reach for semiconductor testing and handling solutions in high-performance computing, memory, automotive, and mobile devices.

The innovations in semiconductor manufacturing have resulted in increased Die Complexity and the adoption of Heterogeneous Integration. This has led to some unique challenges for the testing of ICs.

The Paradigm Shift and Test 2.0

The current test paradigm (Test 1.0) is dominated by traditional “Big Iron” Automated Test Equipment (ATE). In Test 1.0, devices go through standard Wafer Sort, Burn-In, and Final Test. This has been the traditional process for over 30 years. The level of test coverage achieved depends heavily on the "Big-Iron" ATE’s that are now unable to cost-effectively provide adequate test coverage required by today’s complex applications.

The limitation of the current test methodology has resulted in the changing paradigm of semiconductor test that has forced a re-think of test and the introduction of a new paradigm in test that we refer to as Test 2.0.

Test 2.0 leverages big data, intelligent automation, and application-specific instrumentation, to test devices not only at the device level but at the system level. This holistic approach to test delivers an assurance of quality at a significantly lower cost and in a much shorter time to market than was possible in the old test paradigm.

Given the application-specific nature of modern devices, AEM's custom-native modular platform approach to test, enables its customers to goto-market faster, with a solution tailored to the customer's needs. AEM is uniquely positioned to enable this approach with a robust suite of technology capabilities borne out of its innovation DNA, combined with its delivery capabilities, and bolstered with the recent acquisition of CEI.

AEM has a unique ability to develop and deploy Test 2.0 ready systems that tie together elements of Burn-In, Final Test, and SLT into a massively parallel platforms that ensure highly cost-effective test solutions. 

Technologies that accelerate the innovation process

AEM’s Wafer Level Test Solutions from Afore continues to gain customers in the Quantum Computing market. Additionally, we have wafer probers that are qualified by leading sensor manufacturers, and we are set to expand the deployment of these probers.

From high-density digital instruments to mixed signal and protocol-aware instrumentation, our instrumentation portfolio is set to provide the competitive advantage for ATE solutions for SoC, high-power devices, and CMOS image sensors. We have successfully launched our CMOS Image Sensor total solutions.

AEM has a long history of serving the high performance computing market, which has traditionally driven thermal control advancements for semiconductor test. We have expanded our capabilities in active thermal management, which plays a vital part in all IC test steps ranging from Wafer Sort, Burn-In, and SLT, giving us a leading position globally in active thermal management. Our unified thermal control platform ensures end-to-end performance coverage and clear economy of scale advantages ranging from single die low power processors all the way to highly complex multi-chip cloud computing processors.

During the year, we signed a new OEM automotive harness test supplier who has integrated our RF tester Mixed Mode Multi-Port Network Analyzer (MMVNA) into their system. The sales of our new network qualification tester Network Service Assistant (NSA) grew significantly for 5G front-haul and enterprise customers. Our teams have been working collaboratively to develop innovative test solutions for automated testing of passive communications devices such as connectors. These high-performance test solutions have been deployed at customer sites. Our key differentiation is our technology pillars and our deep know-how on composing application specific test and handling solutions.

Clear Leadership & High-Level of Excellence

Earlier in January 2022, we announced a reorganisation of our leadership team. Industry-veteran Samer Kabbani, AEM's Chief Technology Officer (CTO), will take on the role of President of AEM International. In addition to his CTO responsibilities, Samer will now be responsible for all our Business Units (BU) in Finland, the US, and our Test Cell Solutions BU in Singapore. He will also oversee our engagements in South Korea. As we continue to accelerate our new customer acquisition strategy, we've also developed a worldwide sales organisation focusing on revenue growth and driving excellence in Sales Operations. Leading this team is our Senior Vice-President of Sales, Mark Yaeger. I would also like to welcome two new board members, Alice Lin and Russell Tham, and express our thanks to Adrian Chan and Basil Chan, who have retired as our directors on 31 December 2021. I would also like to thank the outgoing director, Lavi Alexander Lev, who will not seek re-election and will retire as a Director at the AGM this year. 

The COVID-19 pandemic has intensified our need to work closely as a team with our partners and stakeholders. The most critical success factor is our people, and we've prioritised their wellbeing and safety. Likewise, our team has stayed resilient in the face of crisis, especially over the past two years. Our shared goal has always been to remain agile and quick in adapting to new strategies and processes and ensure our customers' success. I am proud of our engineering team, who recently received the "Team of the Year" Award in the technology category at the SBR Management Excellence Awards.

A Zero Failure World

Semiconductors will continue to play a critical role in creating a better world. As the proliferation of semiconductors grows in mission-critical applications, we are committed to providing rigorous and agile testing that integrates with the rapid advancements in technology, assuring reliability, enabling scalability, and accelerating progress.

We have confidence in the innovative, resilient, and collaborative culture that AEM has built over the years. This will help us overcome the challenges we see in the current geopolitical situation and realise our vision to build "A Zero Failure World", providing the best-inclass technologies, tools, and proven methodologies to help manufacturers succeed in the 5G era.

On behalf of the AEM Team, I wish you and your families the best of health!

Chandran Nair

Chief Executive Officer

Global Footprint

Accolades

2019

Forbes Asia Best 200 under a billion

 

2019
2020

Forbes Asia Best 200 under a billion

 

2020
2020

Singapore Business Awards, The Enterprise Award 2019/2020

 

2020
2020

Business Technology Excellence Awards 2020, Analytics – Semiconductor

 

2020
2020

The Edge Centurion Awards, Centurion Club (Overall Sector Winner)

 

2020
2020

IR Magazine Southeast Asia IR Award, Best in Sector (Technology)

 

2020
2020

Intel Supplier Achievement Award

 

2020
2020

– Intel Award for Commitment to Software Excellence 2021

– Singapore Business Review National Business Award (2021) for Manufacturing Technology

2020

Building a high-potential, innovative portfolio

At AEM, we offer a growth-driven portfolio with a breadth of innovation capabilities. Our suite of test solutions propel innovation and assure better innovation outcomes for advanced industries. We are an agile, future-focused company with a clear and differentiated vision.

Our investors are key stakeholders to our company. We strive to provide our investors key financial information and corporate information that might be needed for their research.

For more detailed investor queries, please email: investor.relations@aem.com.sg.