MKS Instruments announces full year 2024 financial report

Recently, MKS Instruments released its Q4 and full year financial results for 2024. According to the report, MKS's revenue for the fourth quarter of 2024 reached $935 million, a year-on-year increase of 4.7%, with a GAAP net income of $90 million; In 2024, the annual revenue was nearly 3.6 billion US dollars, a year-on-year decrease of 0.9%. GAAP net revenue was 190 million US dollars, turning losses into profits year-on-year.

John Lee, CEO of MKS, emphasized in a speech at last month's SPIE Global Business Forum the enormous significance of the AI chip packaging market for MKS's photonics product portfolio. Referring to the company's revenue situation and market trends in the fourth quarter, it believes that MKS will enter 2025 with strong momentum, and the key is that its world-class optical solutions and chemical business play a crucial role in the advanced electronics field.

It is understood that MKS owns major photonics brands such as Newport, Ophir, and Spectra Physics. In 2024, the steady growth of MKS's "Semiconductor" and "Electronics and Packaging" sectors offset the decline of the "Specialty Industries" sector. The sales data of these three departments are related to various technologies. Optics and lasers are widely used in the subsystems of lithography and metrology tools, while laser drilling systems can generate thousands of through holes per second on circuit boards. Other products include power meters and infrared optical components for high-power industrial lasers, but MKS believes that this field is currently in a trend of bottoming out.

Despite lackluster sales performance over the past year, MKS was able to achieve a pre tax income of $180 million in 2024, a significant improvement from the previous year's loss of nearly $2 billion. Although the latter figure is mainly due to a write down of $1.9 billion in assets resulting from the acquisition of industrial chemical company Atotech. As of the December 2024 quarter, the company's pre tax income was $79 million, which is exactly the same as the pre tax loss for the same period last year.

The product launch of Central is part of a series of refinancing efforts, and MKS has used lower interest rates to prepay some of its debts. The company's latest income statement shows the positive impact of these decisions, with interest repayments for the December 2024 quarter of only $54 million, down from $90 million in the same period last year.

Looking ahead, MKS expects its sales to reach around 910 million US dollars in the first quarter of 2025, with a slight increase. Considering the recent import tariffs imposed by the United States, the impact on its business is expected to be minimal at present. Although cost management is the focus for 2024, MKS is still investing in new technologies.

Source: Yangtze River Delta Laser Alliance