October 23, 2007 — Tronics Microsystems SA of Grenoble, France says its fiscal quarter that ended September 30 marks the company’s fifth consecutive quarter of net profit, making Tronics the first pure-play contract manufacturer of advanced MEMS devices to achieve consistent profitability. Moreover, the privately held company said that the 2007 fiscal year will close in December with a net profit while revenues for 2007 are expected to exceed last year’s by more than 50 percent.
“The MEMS foundries and contract-manufacturers businesses have experienced a very strong market — 35 percent average annual growth — but the profitability is still not there,” said Jean-Christophe Eloy, general manager and founder of Yole Développement, the French-based market research company and world leader in the MEMS market analysis. “The strong growth of Tronics Microsystems, almost two times higher than the market, and the net profitability over five quarters demonstrates its leadership in manufacturing specialized custom products and provides a strong outlook for their continued growth and success.”
Tronics says its success stems from establishing strategic partnerships with leading systems and sub-systems manufacturers in their fields and in developing and manufacturing highly differentiated specialized products for their demanding applications. This business model has fueled the company’s rapid growth among a select customer base in Europe, North America and Japan in diverse segments such as life-sciences instrumentation, and transportation.
Unlike MEMS foundries that focus mostly on wafer processing, Tronics says it can take complex MEMS concepts from design to product manufacturing, including wafer processing, assembly, custom packaging and testing. Today, 80 percent of Tronics’ revenues are generated by recurrent products manufacturing.
The company expects future growth to be driven by higher demand for custom products in the life sciences and transportation industries. These include ultra-miniature pressure sensors for medical implantable applications, inertial transducers for different motion sensing and navigation applications, and microfluidic devices for lab-automation.
Tronics’ announcement follows its three-time inclusion among the 200 fastest-growing companies in Europe, Middle-East and Africa in the Deloitte Technology Fast 500 survey, and last year’s ranking as the fastest-growing French company in the semiconductor and hardware category. The company maintained profitability even while expanding its technical capabilities and investing in facility expansion. Tronics expanded its Crolles headquarters facility in 2006 and moved to 150mm-wafer format. Earlier this year, the company announced the availability of additional characterization, assembly, packaging and testing equipment.