Private Room

United Test and Assembly Center (UTAC) has seen its plants in Singapore, Shanghai (China) and Thailand reach full capacity, according to company CEO Lee Joon Chung. Meanwhile, its subsidiary in Taiwan, which focuses on memory IC backend services, currently is running at a high utilization rate.

UTAC's Thailand plant is seeing growing demand for analog chips, with orders exceeding its capacity, said Lee. But the recent buyout of ASAT, including ASAT's operations in Dongguan, China, has immediately helped it satisfy customer demand.

The 60,000- to 70,000-square-meter Dongguan facility houses copper wire bonding process and quad-flat-pack-no lead (QFN) packaging lines, Lee said. The newly-acquired capacity will help expand UTAC's backend services for analog IC clients including Broadcom and Maxim, he added.

UTAC has also seen strong orders placed with its two plants in Singapore, thanks to demand from the communications chip and mixed-signal IC sectors, according to Lee. In addition, sales of its Shanghai plant are expected to jump 130% on year to US$70 million in 2010, driven by robust demand from China's IC design customers, said Lee.

UTAC plans to allocate more than US$200 million for 2010 capex, compared to US$70 million spent in 2009, Lee said. It will budget 55-60% of the amount for testing operations, and the remainder for the packaging segment, he added.

UTAC expects revenues to top US$240 million in the second quarter of 2010, up from US$210 million in the first quarter, according to Lee. For the full year, the company projects revenues will grow to US$1 billion from US$601 million in 2009. Lee said UTAC's sales ratio between mixed-signal IC, analog and memory products will be about 45:35:20 this year.