Hana Securities said on the 26th that ISC's earnings growth is likely to continue in the off-season fourth quarter (Oct.–Dec.). It kept a "buy" rating and raised the target price to 130,000 won from 76,000 won.
Hana Securities estimated that ISC will post fourth-quarter revenue of 68.2 billion won and operating profit of 19.4 billion won this year. The figures are up 74% and 159%, respectively, from a year earlier.
Kim Min-kyung, an analyst at Hana Securities, said, "Despite the fourth quarter being a traditional off-season, the diversification of GPU clients will increase supplies of large-area sockets for data centers, and sales to memory clients will continue to improve, centered on high-value-added memory sockets such as SoCAMP."
Kim added, "In addition, the contribution from the equipment division's burn-in testers and module testers, which began to be reflected in earnest from the third quarter (Jul.–Sep.), is expected to continue in the fourth quarter," noting, "Diversification of GPU and ASIC clients is proceeding actively, which should also ease earnings volatility from clients' new product transitions."
The firm also presented next year's estimates at 301.6 billion won in revenue and 86.5 billion won in operating profit. The figures are up 40% and 50%, respectively, from this year's estimates.
Kim said, "An increase in the average selling price (ASP) of test sockets for major GPU clients' next-generation products, and mass production expansion by new artificial intelligence (AI) accelerators and ASIC clients, will drive results."