GEORGE TOWN (June 4): Pentamaster Corp Bhd (KL:PENTA) is entering the high-growth market of advanced packaging and testing solutions for next-generation chips used in artificial intelligence (AI).
Pentamaster spent between 5% and 10% of its annual revenue on designing and development work to develop the bespoke packaging and test equipment to produce the AI integrated circuits (ICs), said executive chairman Datuk Chuah Choon Bin.
“We are now in the designing and development stage of the advanced packaging solutions, which should be available in the market in the first half of 2026,” Chuah said in an interview with The Edge.
The US, Europe and Taiwan would be the main markets for the advanced packaging solutions, said Chuah. He sees this venture contributing significantly to the group’s turnover and profit.
The plan to cater its existing solutions to the higher-specification chips comes at a time when more AI-ready data centres are being built globally on the back of competition between countries and corporations to advance their AI capabilities.
Concurrently, the global advanced packaging market is anticipated to grow strongly, with a 7.2% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) from 2025 to 2035, according to a Future Market Insights Inc report.
The market is expected to be worth US$35.2 billion (RM149.49) this year and more than double in the next ten years to US$70.7 billion by 2035.
“The increasing heterogeneous integration, fan-out wafer-level packaging (FOWLP), system-in-package (SiP) and 3D IC packaging consolidate the market growth.
“Thanks to strong semiconductor manufacturing infrastructure, with China, Taiwan and South Korea leading the scores, the Asia-Pacific region remains the market leader.
“North America and Europe, on the other hand, are focused on research and development to build their semiconductor ecosystems,” Chuah said.
“This growth is driven by the increasing need for advanced semiconductor packaging solutions, propelled by advancements in AI, 5G technology, the Internet of Things (IoT) and autonomous driving applications,” he added.
Further, growing demand for power-saving electronic products with small footprints and exerting pressure on the automotive, healthcare and telecom industries would continue boosting market growth, he said.
Commenting on Pentamaster’s prospects, Chuah sees 2H2025 financial performance to improve over 1H. This is on the pick-up in orders from the US, China and Europe for medical, factory automation and automotive test products.
The 10% tariffs imposed by the US on Malaysian electronic exports “aren’t causing problems”, he said. “All our competitors faced the same tariff situation.”
However, Pentamaster’s performance for the full year ending Dec 31 (FY2025) would be flat due to a weak first half.
Pentamaster, which operates three plants — two in Batu Kawan and one on Penang island — said the group had an outstanding order of about RM350 million from medical, factory automation and automotive customers.
For the first quarter ended March 31, 2025 (1QFY2025), Pentamaster’s net profit fell 32.57% year-on-year to RM13.07 million or 1.84 sen per share.
Quarterly revenue fell 22.94% y-o-y to RM131.6 million, amid a sharp drop in its factory automation solutions segment contribution due to timing differences in project delivery schedules and order conversion cycles.
Source From : Pentamaster adds AI chips to its packaging, testing equipment solutions