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July 23 (Reuters) - BE Semiconductor Industries (Besi) on Thursday reported quarterly orders significantly above last year's level, fuelled by strong demand for AI, hybrid bonding, photonics and data centres.
Investors are betting on rising demand for Besi's hybrid bonding solutions, a chip-packaging technology that enables two chips to be directly bonded together, citing the company's first-mover advantage as AI-driven demand accelerates.
The Dutch semiconductor equipment maker said its order bookings, an important indicator for future growth, more than doubled to €292.9 million ($334.8 million) in the second quarter, compared with €128 million a year ago.
The number of customers using Besi's hybrid bonding technology increased to 21 in the quarter from 15 at the end of last year, as the technology gained traction in logic, memory, co-packaged optics and consumer applications and drove capacity expansions among customers, it said.
"We see order momentum continuing in the third quarter due to ongoing demand strength for current and future AI applications as well as improvement in Besi's traditional mainstream end-user markets," CEO Richard Blickman said in a statement.
He added customers were indicating that AI-related spending remains on a multi-year growth path, as demand for agentic AI applications fuels increased purchases of central processing units and advanced packaging equipment for data centres.
Besi expects revenue to grow between 10% and 15% in the third quarter, compared with the €249.9 million reported for the April-June period.
Initial earnings reports from Alphabet , ASML and TSMC also point to continued strength in the semiconductor sector, driven by booming demand for AI chips.
($1 = 0.8748 euros)
(Reporting by Ozan Ergenay in Gdansk, editing by Bartosz Dabrowski and Milla Nissi-Prussak)
