BE Semiconductor Industries (BESI.AS): Memory engagement advances, with cost and yield remaining key hurdles to qualification

Research evidence excerpt

BE Semiconductor Industries (BESI.AS): Memory engagement advances, with cost and yield remaining key hurdles to qualification

Goldman Sachs BE Semiconductor Industries (BESI.AS)

n Memory engagement advances, with cost and yield remaining key hurdles to

qualification: HB adoption for HBM remains at the evaluation stage, with one of the

three major memory manufacturers actively testing the technology, a second

beginning evaluations and development activity continuing across all three.

Management indicated that one customer is progressing faster than the others and

could announce full-production status in the coming quarters, while engagement

from the remaining two manufacturers is also increasing. The main qualification

hurdles remain cost, yield and process accuracy, per management, with customers

required to resolve material and integration issues before moving into volume

production. BESI noted that qualification with its major Taiwanese logic customer

took more than three years before the required cost and yield thresholds were

achieved, suggesting similarly extended timelines for Korean and US memory

customers. Importantly, BESI also noted potential easing of HBM thickness

requirements by JEDEC does not alter the underlying thermal and performance

advantages of hybrid bonding, e.g., heat dissipation, with all three major memory

manufacturers continuing to prepare for eventual adoption.

n Wafer-level assembly applications expand beyond core AI compute: Beyond its

core AI exposure, BESI continues to target growth across wafer-level assembly, CPO

and chiplet-based architectures. Management highlighted CPO as an important LT

application for hybrid bonding, given the need to integrate optical and compute