[Edaily Reporter Kwon Oh-seok] iM Securities announced on the 9th that it is maintaining its “Buy” rating on #ParkSystems and raising its target price from 300,000 won to 334,000 won.

Song Myeong-seop, an analyst at iM Securities, stated, "Although first-quarter earnings fell short of expectations, earnings are expected to resume improving starting in the second quarter, and we believe full-year earnings will show a pattern of a weak start followed by a strong finish," adding "The growth potential of new equipment such as NX-TSH (cutting-edge packaging measurement equipment) and Hybrid WLI (white light interferometer) remains strong, and with non-memory investments recently resuming, sales of existing equipment such as NX-Mask (photomask repair) and NX-Wafer (wafer measurement) are also expected to maintain their upward trend," he predicted.
Accordingly, he estimated that this year’s revenue and operating profit would reach 233.3 billion won and 46.3 billion won, respectively, representing year-over-year increases of 13% and 10%. Previously, first-quarter revenue and operating profit came in at 39.4 billion won and 2.1 billion won, respectively, falling short of expectations. Analyst Song explained, “This is because equipment shipment schedules are concentrated in the second quarter and beyond, a trend clearly reflected in the fact that the order backlog at the end of the first quarter stood at 70 billion won, a 41% increase from the 49.6 billion won recorded at the end of the previous quarter.”
He added, “Park Systems’ NX-TSH equipment is already securing orders for mid-tier packaging for networking ASICs (application-specific integrated circuits) and custom chiplet semiconductors from its largest foundry customer, and it appears to be under development for top-tier packaging for AI (artificial intelligence) accelerator semiconductors as well.” He emphasized, “For hybrid WLI equipment, which can compensate for both the low precision of optical systems and the slow speed of atomic force microscopes, steady orders are coming in from major U.S. customers as well as clients in Korea and China.”
He further explained, “While these products were previously used mainly for R&D, we expect their application to expand to mass production starting this year. With our largest customer’s non-memory investments resuming recently, sales of NX-Mask equipment—which is primarily used for non-memory semiconductors—are also expected to increase steadily.”
He further noted, “Driven by steady orders for both new and existing equipment, new order intake this year is expected to increase by approximately 20% year-over-year, and annual revenue is projected to recover from the first quarter’s slump, showing a pattern of a slow start followed by a strong finish.”