Park Dong Ju, head of SKC’s finance division, said on a conference call on Wednesday that the company will run its businesses with a focus on profitability to restore earnings and strengthen financial stability. SKC also plans to increase sales volumes of battery and semiconductor materials.
For glass substrates, which SKC is positioning as a future growth driver, the company said it will improve product quality and yields to support reliability testing. SKC said glass substrates could be a “game changer” for the semiconductor ecosystem and that it expects to maintain clear differentiation and a technology gap over latecomers.
On progress, SKC said its plant in Georgia was completed at the end of 2024 and that it focused on securing key technologies in 2025, with most now in place. It said it has completed prototype samples and submitted them to customers.
SKC said customer requirements for reliability testing are becoming more specific and sophisticated because the product has no close precedent. It said commercialization is running somewhat later than earlier market expectations, but it will deploy a large number of semiconductor engineers to recheck its execution structure and speed up commercialization.
In battery materials such as copper foil, SKC said a one-time cost of 316.6 billion won was reflected in the fourth quarter of last year, widening its pretax loss. To offset that, it guided that copper foil sales volume this year will rise 50% from a year earlier. SKC said demand from North America-centered energy storage systems is expected to increase, and it will prioritize operational efficiency based on a full-scale ramp-up of its Malaysia plant while serving key global customers.
In semiconductor materials, SKC said it posted its best annual performance on demand for high value-added products used in artificial intelligence data centers. An SKC official said the company is targeting about 20% growth in companywide revenue this year from last year, citing higher electric-vehicle copper foil sales to customers in Greater China and an expanded customer base as applications for small batteries diversify.
* This article has been translated by AI.
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