U.S. based supplier of automation systems for the PV, semiconductor and sapphire industries Amtech Systems Inc. reports that it registered turnover of $32.9 million in the second quarter of fiscal 2017, which ended on Mar. 31, 2017.
Revenue for the period amounts to $32.9 million, of which $16.6 million comes from the solar division. In the same period of 2016, turnover was $22.5 million, while in the previous quarter sales reached $ 29.1 million.
“The sequential increase and the increase from the prior year quarter,” the company explains, “is due primarily to increased demand for our solar PECVD and ALD tools, as well as our semiconductor equipment.”
Net loss for the quarter was $1.4 million, slightly up from $1.5 million a year earlier. Order intake was $68.2 million (of which $46.9 million for solar), while quarter-end backlog reached $87.4 million (solar $66.9 million).
Popular content
“We are pleased with our $68 million of total bookings in the second quarter, including $47 million of solar orders, which is the highest solar bookings since the second quarter of 2011. With those bookings, our March 31, 2017 backlog is $87 million, a 67 percent increase since December 31, 2016 and the highest in six years. As announced on April 25, 2017, we received a follow-on order for the second phase of a multi-phase 1GW project, in addition to the order for the first phase announced in January 2017,” Amtech CEO Fokko Pentinga said.
At the end of March 2016, the company had cash of $38.9 million. This compares to $23.6 million at end of the previous quarter. Improved liquidity, Amtech said, was attributable to customer deposits received from the turnkey order announced on January 24, 2017, and good collection on receivables for both Solar and Semi, partially offset by cash used to begin work on the turnkey order.
Looking forward, the company expects to achieve sales in the range of in the range of $39 to $42 million for the second quarter of fiscal 2017, while gross margin is forecast to be in the low to mid 20% range, with operating margin slightly negative.
This content is protected by copyright and may not be reused. If you want to cooperate with us and would like to reuse some of our content, please contact: editors@pv-magazine.com.
By submitting this form you agree to pv magazine using your data for the purposes of publishing your comment.
Your personal data will only be disclosed or otherwise transmitted to third parties for the purposes of spam filtering or if this is necessary for technical maintenance of the website. Any other transfer to third parties will not take place unless this is justified on the basis of applicable data protection regulations or if pv magazine is legally obliged to do so.
You may revoke this consent at any time with effect for the future, in which case your personal data will be deleted immediately. Otherwise, your data will be deleted if pv magazine has processed your request or the purpose of data storage is fulfilled.
Further information on data privacy can be found in our Data Protection Policy.