FREMONT, Calif., July 19, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Aehr Test Systems (NASDAQ: AEHR), a worldwide supplier of semiconductor test and reliability qualification equipment, today announced financial results for its fiscal 2022 fourth quarter and full year ended May 31, 2022.

Fiscal Fourth Quarter Financial Results:

• Net sales were $20.3 million, up 166% from $7.6 million in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2021.
• GAAP net income was $5.8 million, or $0.20 per diluted share, compared to GAAP net income of $567,000, or $0.02 per diluted share, in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2021.
• Non-GAAP net income was $6.5 million, or $0.23 per diluted share, which excludes the impact of stock-based compensation, compared to non-GAAP net income of $930,000, or $0.04 per diluted share, in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2021.
• Bookings were $4.4 million for the quarter ended May 31, 2022.
• Backlog as of May 31, 2022 was $11.1 million. Effective backlog, which includes all orders since the end of the fourth quarter, is over $25.5 million.
• Total cash and cash equivalents as of May 31, 2022 were $31.5 million, up from $4.6 million at May 31, 2021.

Fiscal Year Financial Results:

• Net sales were $50.8 million, up 206% from $16.6 million in fiscal 2021.
• GAAP net income was $9.5 million, or $0.34 per diluted share, compared to a GAAP net loss of $2.0 million, or $0.09 per diluted share, in fiscal 2021.
• Non-GAAP net income was $11.7 million, or $0.42 per diluted share, compared to a non-GAAP net loss of $3.2 million, or $0.13 per diluted share, in fiscal 2021.
  

An explanation of the use of non-GAAP financial measures and a reconciliation of Aehr’s non-GAAP financial measures to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measures can be found in the accompanying tables.

Gayn Erickson, President and CEO of Aehr Test Systems, commented:

“We are pleased to report very strong growth for fiscal 2022, with a record annual revenue of $50.8 million, and record bookings of $60.2 million. Importantly, we are seeing the significant leverage in our operating model to our bottom line, as evidenced by the strong profit for the fiscal year.

“Our strong bookings and revenue growth in fiscal 2022 were driven by the demand for our wafer level test and burn-in solutions, particularly for wafer level stress and stabilization of silicon carbide devices for use directly in the electric vehicle market. The silicon carbide market for electric vehicles and its supporting infrastructure requirements are growing at a tremendous rate, with Canaccord Genuity estimating that wafer capacity will increase from 150,000 6-inch wafers in 2021 to over four million 6-inch equivalent wafers in 2030 to meet the electric vehicle market alone.

“Our lead customer for silicon carbide wafer level burn-in made significant investments in their silicon carbide production throughout this past fiscal year. Today, we are excited to announce we received $12.8 million in orders from them for multiple FOX-XP™ systems, a FOX™ high volume production WaferPak Aligner, and a small number of FOX WaferPaks to meet their increased production capacity needs for silicon carbide-based power semiconductors for the electric vehicle market. We expect significant subsequent orders for WaferPaks needed for the system orders announced today. These FOX systems, WaferPaks, and the WaferPak Aligner are expected to ship by the end of our fiscal third quarter ending February 28, 2023.

“Aehr Test provides a highly unique and cost-effective solution for applying stress testing across every device on an entire wafer before they are singulated and put into packages or multi-chip modules. This allows our customers to burn-in every single device at a lower cost than they could in any other form due to our ability to contact thousands of devices on a single wafer and test 18 wafers in a single system with our FOX-XP multi-wafer test and burn-in system and proprietary FOX full wafer contact WaferPaks.

“We are currently engaged with most other current and future silicon carbide suppliers. The major silicon carbide companies expect that most electric vehicle traction inverters will move to multi-chip modules. As such, they have told us that they must move to wafer level stress and burn-in to remove the inherent failures before they put the devices into multi-die modules to meet their cost, yield, and reliability goals of these modules. Aehr’s unique, low cost, multi-wafer level test and burn-in solution provides the test electronics and device contactor technology that enables contact to 100% of devices on a single wafer, and the handling and alignment equipment to provide a total turnkey single vendor solution to meet the needed critical test and stress requirements.

“Our benchmarks and evaluations with prospective new silicon carbide customers continue with very good momentum. We have recently completed a wafer stress testing of yet another of the current large suppliers of silicon carbide with excellent results. They have told us that the FOX platform is the only solution that can scale to meet the production capacity needed to address their silicon carbide device growth, particularly for electric vehicle applications. This is in addition to our previously announced engagement with another large silicon carbide supplier with whom we have been working closely over the last year to correlate and qualify the FOX system to displace their current production reliability screening test and burn-in systems. The results of that benchmark also met a key milestone this last quarter and we believe that we will successfully complete their correlation process over the coming months, which will allow them to move forward with our FOX-XP solution. We expect both customers to implement the FOX platform solution into their manufacturing production flow.

“In addition to the benchmarks with these two large silicon carbide companies, we have been approached by several more silicon carbide suppliers to evaluate our FOX-XP systems to meet their production needs for traction inverters and on-board charges for electric vehicles, and for other applications such as electric commuter train engine controllers, photovoltaic power conversion, and other industrial applications.

“As a result of all these positive evaluations, we believe that we will receive orders from at least several new silicon carbide customers and begin shipping systems to meet their production capacity by the end of our current fiscal year that ends May 31, 2023. There is a significant industry ramp needed to expand silicon carbide production to meet the forecasted needs of these electric vehicles over the next few years and through the end of the decade and beyond.

“We are very encouraged by the positive momentum we are seeing with current and prospective customers and anticipate multiple new customers will begin placing orders and taking shipments over the next few years to meet the enormous demand of silicon carbide devices used in the electric vehicle market over the next decade. If current and/or new customers increase their forecasts and/or decide to pull in orders, we have significant upside capacity to meet their needs. This provides us with the confidence that we can meet a significant upside in revenue shipments if the customer demand pulls in.”

Fiscal 2023 Financial Guidance:

For the fiscal year ending May 31, 2023, Aehr expects total revenue to be at least $60 million to $70 million, with strong profit margins similar to last fiscal year. Aehr also expects bookings to grow faster than revenues in fiscal 2023 as the ramp in demand for silicon carbide in electric vehicles increases exponentially throughout the decade.