Germany's Aixtron swings to the black in 2nd qtr
Wednesday August 4, 5:17 pm ET
FRANKFURT, Aug 4 (Reuters) - Germany's Aixtron (XETRA:AIXG.DE - News) swung to the black in the second quarter after losses in the previous five quarters, it said on Wednesday, thanks to growing demand for its equipment used in the chip-making process.
Net income came in at 0.5 million euros ($0.6 million) in the three months to June, compared with a year-ago net loss of 8.3 million euros, Aixtron said in a statement.
The company is the world's leading maker of gas-plating systems used to help produce chips for light-emitting diode (LED) displays in multimedia phones and laptops, for which demand has boomed in the past year.
Equipment orders rose 23 percent quarter-on-quarter to 36.9 million euros, their fifth consecutive rise, with order backlog standing at 73.6 million euros at the end of June, up 11 percent from the end of March.
Sales rose by more than half from the year-ago period to 34.2 million euros.
The sales and orders figures were a slight increase on preliminary results given last month, when the company said sales were 34 million euros and equipment order intake was 36 million.
The company reiterated it saw full-year sales between 130 million and 140 million euros after raising its forecast last month when it announced it was buying U.S. company Genus Inc. (NasdaqNM:GGNS - News) in an all-share deal worth 118 million euros.
It also repeated it expected full-year net profit in a range of 2-5 million euros, excluding merger-related expenses.
U.S. semiconductor maker Cree Inc. (NasdaqNM:CREE - News), an Aixtron customer, said last week its quarterly profit had surged 84 percent on a boom in demand for its LED products.
But Genus, which makes equipment for the production of microchips and electronic storage devices, last week reported a doubling of its quarterly net loss to $2.9 million year-on-year, on a 40 percent drop in sales to $8.8 million.
The results announcement came after the market close.
Aixtron's shares, although slightly outperforming the European technology index (Zurich:^SX8P - News) for the year to date, plunged to 4.44 euros by Wednesday's close from 6.07 euros on July 2, when Aixtron announced the Genus acquisition. |
