Taiwan's semiconductor materials distributors including Topco Scientific, Wah Lee Industrial, Topco Technologies, and Chang Wah Electromaterials are all upbeat about their sales in the third quarter of the year due to strong demand from both foundry and backend houses and even IC substrate makers, according to industry sources.

Topco Scientific, which mainly distributes photoresist and silicon wafers to foundry houses, has reported its revenues for the first five months of the year rose 9.1% on year to NT$16.43 billion (US$594.08 million), driven by robust shipments to foundry fabs that have been running at full capacity, the sources said.

Wah Lee's January-May revenues jumped 23.4% on year to NT$27.309 billion, bolstered by brisk sales of photoresists, strippers, electronics specialty gases, and CMP slurry to TSMC, and its shipments of such materials are expected to grow further in the months ahead as the foundry continues to enter volume production of new advanced process nodes, said the sources.

Wah Lee now also sees clear order visibility through second-quarter 2022 for materials needed for ABF substrate production at three major Taiwanese makers Unimicron Technology, Nan Ya PCB and Kinsus Interconnect, who are all proceeding capacity expansions at plants in Taiwan and China, the sources said.

As epoxy resin and other materials demand for COF or COG packaging of display driver ICs, power management ICs and MCUs continues to gain momentum, distributors Wah Lee, Chang Wah and Niching are also poised to embrace a strong second-half 2021.

Meanwhile, Topco Technologies, distributing a large variety of silicone materials for Japan's Shin-Etsu Chemical, raked in revenues of NT$3.648 billion in the first five months of the year, up 20.82% on year. It has seen order visibility throughout the third quarter, with orders mainly from clients in five major sectors such as consumer electronics, cosmetics, automotive, healthcare, and leisure sports.

By DIGITIMES