TOKYO (Reuters) – Japan’s Advantest on Wednesday hiked its full year operating profit forecast by 37% due to strong demand for its testing tools for chips used in artificial intelligence tasks.
“As of late, we have seen further growth in tester demand for AI related, high performance semiconductors,” CEO Douglas Lefever told an earnings briefing.
Advantest forecasts operating income of 226 billion yen ($1.46 billion) in the financial year ending March 31.
“Our efforts to improve supply chain management in order to keep up with the delivery requirements of HPC and AI customers have enabled us to increase the pace of supply,” Lefever said.
Operating income in the October-December quarter climbed 158% to 69.2 billion yen.
Advantest is among stocks that has been buffeted in recent days as the emergence of an AI model from China startup DeepSeek caused investors to question the outlook for AI investment.
“As of now, we have seen no indications from our customers of changes to their forecast,” Lefever said.
AI development including different AI models has long-term positive implications for semiconductor demand and testing, he added.
($1 = 155.2000 yen)
(Reporting by Sam Nussey; Editing by Toby Chopra)
