SkyWater swings to loss on dipping Q4 sales

Business news | February 27, 2025

By Peter Clarke

SkyWater Analog power foundry Advanced Packaging

Semiconductor foundry SkyWater Technology Inc. (Bloomington, Minnesota) has reported a net loss of U$0.7 million on sales revenue of US$75.5 million in 4Q24.

Revenue was down 20 percent from US$93.8 million in 3Q24 when the company made a net profit of US$1.5 million. Compared with 4Q23 the loss was reduced on sales down by 5 percent.

For the full year 2024 SkyWater made a net loss of US$6.8 million on total revenues of US$342.3 million. The full-year revenue was increased by 19 percent from US$286.7 million and the loss reduced from US$30.8 million in 2023.

There is evidence that SkyWater is managing to increase margins, a process that is likely to be helped by the acquisition of a wafer fab in Austin, Texas, from Infineon.

Infineon sells US wafer fab to SkyWater

The company has also received equipment in support of fan-out wafer-level packaging in Florida. This should lead to a ramp in advanced packaging revenues in 2025.

“Our financial results for fiscal year 2024 demonstrate the strength of our highly differentiated, technology foundry business model, within a dynamic and growing domestic semiconductor ecosystem,” commented CEO Thomas Sonderman, in a statement. “In the nearly four years since our IPO, we have successfully transformed a mature fabrication facility into a monetized Advanced Technology Services (ATS) business, which has grown to a scale that supported record revenues and profitability for SkyWater in 2024.”

However, in the short term SkyWater is forecasting a further drop in revenue. The company said the outlook for 1Q25 is for the company to make a loss on revenues of between US$59 million and US$63 million. At the mid-point this will be a decline of 23.4 percent from the revenue achieved in 1Q24.

Despite the outlook the company’s share price jumped by about 12 percent on the news, reportedly due to beating analysts’ earnings estimates.