IN Brief:
- Besi recorded €342.6 million in third-quarter equipment orders, 96.1% above the year-earlier period.
- Orders for hybrid bonding during the first nine months exceeded twice the total for 2025.
- Cumulative demand exceeded 215 hybrid-bonding systems across 23 customers; installed production capacity is not specified.
BE Semiconductor Industries has reported third-quarter orders of €342.6 million as semiconductor manufacturers increased demand for advanced assembly equipment, including hybrid-bonding systems used in logic, memory and photonics applications.
The Dutch company, known as Besi, recorded order growth of 17.0% from the preceding quarter and 96.1% compared with the same period in 2025. Revenue reached €283.4 million, increases of 13.4% quarter on quarter and 113.6% year on year, reflecting stronger shipments for data centre and AI-related computing applications.
Order intake and revenue describe different stages of the equipment business. A customer may commit to a system well before it is delivered, installed and recognised as revenue, with the schedule influenced by factory readiness, process qualification and the customer’s wider investment programme.
Hybrid bonding is an important contributor to the current demand. The technology forms closely spaced connections between prepared semiconductor surfaces, allowing dies or wafers to be joined with high interconnect density. In suitable designs it can shorten electrical paths compared with assemblies relying on larger conventional solder bumps.
Denser connections can be valuable where data must move rapidly between processing, memory or other functional components. Their electrical benefit depends on the architecture, however, and increasing interconnect density also places greater demands on material preparation and assembly control.
Reliable bonding requires carefully prepared surfaces with appropriate flatness and cleanliness. Particles, variation in surface shape or errors in positioning can prevent the intended electrical contacts from forming. As interconnect dimensions shrink, a displacement that would once have been tolerable may become a cause of electrical failure or reduced yield.
Bonding equipment must therefore align components accurately and repeatably while handling them without creating unwanted damage or contamination. The performance of the equipment is closely connected to upstream cleaning and planarisation and to the inspection and testing carried out after assembly.
Besi identified hybrid-bonding orders for logic devices, co-packaged optics and memory during the quarter. Those applications use different system architectures, but each can require multiple semiconductor components to be integrated into a dense package with carefully controlled electrical and mechanical connections.
Chiplet-based logic designs divide processing and supporting functions across separate dies. Their packaging must deliver suitable bandwidth and signal integrity between those components while managing power distribution, thermal expansion and heat removal.
Optical communication functions create additional integration requirements where photonic and electronic components are brought into a common assembly. Positioning, thermal behaviour and coupling between optical elements can influence the performance of the finished device, making the manufacturing process a substantial part of the engineering challenge.
Memory manufacturers are also assessing advanced bonding techniques as they develop denser stacked products. Hybrid bonding can offer a route to finer connections, but the appropriate method depends on package structure, yield, throughput and cost rather than the interconnect spacing alone.
Besi reported orders for its TC Next thermo-compression bonding systems from a leading memory customer alongside demand for hybrid-bonding equipment. These are distinct assembly approaches, and the orders do not establish that one technique has displaced the other across memory production.
During the first nine months of 2026, hybrid-bonding orders exceeded twice the total recorded throughout 2025. Besi reported 23 customers adopting the technology and cumulative equipment demand exceeding 215 systems, indicating a broader commercial pipeline than in the previous year.
The cumulative figures should not be read as a count of machines already operating in high-volume production. Placing an order, receiving a machine, qualifying a process and manufacturing customer products at scale are separate milestones, with different schedules and technical risks.
Besi’s work with Applied Materials addresses aspects of advanced packaging process development, while its collaboration with ASML concerns improvements to placement accuracy. Hybrid bonding nevertheless depends on a combination of equipment, materials and inspection processes; no single machine determines the yield of a completed semiconductor package.
Higher orders have not led Besi to forecast a comparable immediate rise in fourth-quarter revenue. The company expects revenue to remain approximately level with the third quarter, within a range of plus or minus 5%, with some customers seeking equipment deliveries timed to capacity planned for the first half of 2027.
That delivery pattern can create a gap between growing equipment demand and an increase in semiconductor output. Factories must install systems, complete process development, train production teams and validate the assembly flow before commercial manufacturing volumes can increase.
Across the first nine months of 2026, Besi recorded revenue of €718.1 million and orders of €905.2 million, up 69.0% and 108.3% respectively from the comparable period of 2025. Net income was €247.8 million, while the third-quarter gross margin reached 65.2% and quarterly net income totalled €107.2 million.
The company also announced a €100 million share repurchase programme, a financial decision separate from the engineering investment by its customers. The longer-term manufacturing significance of the order growth will depend on how many hybrid-bonding systems are installed and qualified and whether they achieve the required alignment accuracy, throughput and production yield.
