Amkor: Enabling technology

Broad offerings, global presence drive packaging and test specialist to leading position.

By Martha Richards -- Movers and Shakers, 6/15/2001

	AT A GLANCE
	Amkor Technology West Chester, PA www.amkor.com 2000 revenue: $2.39 billion 2000 net income: $154 million Nasdaq symbol: AMKR Share price: $19.40 (4/27/01) 52-week high: $64.75 52-week low: $11.75

Its customer list sounds more like a list of who’s who in the electronics industry: Texas Instru-ments, Intel, Motorola—all told, 37 of the world’s 40 largest semiconductor companies. Amkor Technology, the world’s largest independent pro-vider of semiconductor packaging and test services, makes it its business to meet the needs of these industry giants.

The growing trend toward outsourcing packaging and test services has propelled Amkor’s sales to roughly $2.4 billion for 2000, a 25 percent increase over 1999. With nearly 200 customers, and with 33 years of experience under its belt, Amkor has the makings of an industry giant itself.

James Kim founded Amkor in 1968 as the United States marketing intermediary of his father’s South Korean company, Anam Industrial, which is now Anam Semiconductor. The company went public in 1998, and Anam sold its test and packaging facilities to Amkor, continuing business as purely a wafer foundry. The companies remain closely linked. Amkor owns a percentage of Anam, and James Kim presides as chairman over both companies.

Amkor’s size, broad portfolio of offerings, technological capabilities, and global presence put the company at a competitive advantage, according to John Boruch, Amkor’s president and CEO. “We believe that we are one of the technology leaders of test and packaging in the world,” he says. Amkor offers more than 850 different package formats and sizes, and assembled 5.5 billion semiconductor packages in 2000. The company undertakes continuous development, as well as co-development projects with others, to meet the packaging challenges presented by shrinking device sizes, in-creasing device sophistication, and the ongoing miniaturization of systems. The ability to address these challenges in order to meet the needs of its customers has been one of Amkor’s strengths.

Amkor’s offerings make the company a one-stop shop for many customers. The company offers everything from traditional leadframe packages for through-hole and surface mounting to the latest chip-scale and ball-grid-array packages. Amkor has factories in the Philippines, South Korea, Taiwan, China, Japan, and the United States. Value-added wafer fabrication and test services supplement the company’s assembly capabilities.

Amkor is a leading provider of many of the advanced technologies that enable some of the high-tech devices that are on the market today. Some of these include thin-package formats and BGA packages for optical/imaging devices, SiP (system-in-package) modules, improved interconnect with flip-chip technology, and 3D-packaging technologies. “We’ve been a leader in addressing the major shifts in technology packaging in these past couple of years,” Boruch says. The company employs more than 300 semiconductor-packaging technologists to keep itself on the leading edge.

	“We believe that we’ll benefit from the accelerating outsourcing trend.” —John Boruch, President and CEO, Amkor Technology

The current trend of outsourcing assembly and test helps to put Amkor in a premium position. The growth of the semiconductor market, the popularity of fabless business models, and the development of advanced packaging technology have all led to the increase in outsourcing. “We believe that we’ll benefit from the accelerating outsourcing trend,” Boruch predicts. The slowdown of the economy, he feels, should be seen as an opportunity. “We benefit from downturns,” he says. Amkor believes the current state of the economy is an opportunity to maintain a leadership position. The company sees these times as an advantage, since customers limit their own capital expansions and technology, and often sell some of their factories to eliminate costly internal manufacturing.

Opportunities for growth in overseas markets have also set Amkor on the track for global expansion. The company recently opened its first chip-assembly and testing plant in China, following a joint-venture agreement in Japan with Toshiba. Amkor also recently acquired two Taiwanese assembly houses.

As Amkor continues to develop advanced packaging technologies and expand into high-growth areas, future success seems inevitable. As packaging and test requirements continue to become more complex in an ever-changing industry, Amkor will be faced with stepping up to the challenge of meeting its customers’ lofty demands.