2Q FY2017 Earnings Release Conference Q&A
The outlook for 2017 shows that logic continues to be firm, and there is a strong willingness to invest in NAND due to high demand for SSD. DRAM has slowed down at the moment, but we expect it to grow next year. Generally, we are optimistic about orders toward the first half of 2017.
It is expected that the amount of wafer input for next year will grow 5% or more year-on-year, and that the semiconductor market will also grow by about the same rate. The number of processes involved in manufacturing semiconductors will also increase, so the manufacturing equipment market can also be expected to grow by around 5%. In China, quite a large number of factories are expected to be built towards 2020. In addition, there are many positive factors, including investment in cutting-edge miniaturization, acceleration of the spread of SSD and increased demand for high reliability, low power consumption chips for IoT.
It is expected that the investment in 7 nm and investment in development of 5 nm will progress in a number of geographical areas.
We received orders to the value of approximately 200 billion yen for 3 consecutive quarters, and I expect that the situation will continue without much increase or decrease. We are concentrating on meeting our target of growing at a rate above market growth as set out in our medium term business plan.
Our share for the previous generation of the multi-level contact process is 100%, and we have been able to maintain the share for 6X layers as well. As for new ones, the adoption rate has increased in the patterning process. As the number of layers increase in the next 4-5 years, there will be substantial market growth in the multi-level contact process. We can expect growth, as we have market share. As for our medium term plan, we will continue to maintain our 100% share in multi-level contacts, and will improve our share in the patterning process. Customers are currently evaluating our equipment for the slit process. As for the memory hole process, we are working on development and evaluation with a medium to long term perspective.
We have not been hearing concerns about the feasibility of increasing the number of layers. We expect that active investment in 3D NAND will continue from the latter half of this calendar year towards next year.
Investment in 3D NAND has generally been progressing as expected.
We have been receiving orders this year already, but we expect large-scale investment to start in the latter half of next calendar year.
We expect to receive orders from multiple customers because of the technical superiority of our equipment. We aim to gain 100% market share in coater/developer and 70% in etching equipment.
This is a summary of questions and answers.