Advantest Corp, the world's largest maker of chip-testing equipment, said on Thursday orders would likely remain on a recovery path in the next six months, but it was hard to say what would happen after that. Advantest President Toshio Maruyama told Reuters in an interview that orders, a closely watched leading indicator for earnings, have been on the rise since hitting a bottom in the October-December quarter.
"Judging from the current orders trend, I don't see too much weakness ahead I think orders are going to be stronger in the first half of the next business year (from April) than in the second half of this business year," Maruyama said.
Maruyama was quick to point out, however, that it was too early to forecast its earnings performance in the next business year as the outlook for orders in the second half remained cloudy.
"It is really difficult to foresee how clients' capital investments will shape up in a further six months' time," Maruyama said.
Advantest, which competes with the likes of Teradyne Inc , Agilent Technologies and Yokogawa Electric Corp , expects a net profit of 39 billion yen ($368 million) on sales of 241 billion yen for the year ending on March 31.
Orders in the current business year would likely come largely in line with its target of 230 billion yen, he said.
Maruyama added that even if the company misses the target, it would only be by up to 5 billion yen.
Some chip testers cost as much as 300 million yen a unit and last-minute orders can substantially change the total size of annual orders.
Advantest holds a dominant share of more than 70 percent in the global market for memory chip testers, and is aiming to boost its presence in the tester market for system chips, where Teradyne is the industry leader.