Semifive said on Thursday it posted third-quarter revenue of 51.4 billion won and an operating loss of 9.7 billion won. Revenue rose 23 percent from a year earlier, but the operating loss widened 34 percent to 9.7 billion won from 7.2 billion won.

Revenue increased but the deficit widened. Gross profit rose to 11.4 billion won from 9.7 billion won, but selling and administrative expenses climbed more sharply to 21.1 billion won from 16.9 billion won and offset the gain.

As supply of high value-added AI chips ramps up, product sales rose 167 percent from the previous quarter to 12.0 billion won from 4.5 billion won, the company said. It said the revenue increase was driven by higher orders. New orders in the third quarter came to 178.4 billion won, up 437 percent from a year earlier. Order backlog rose 75 percent from the previous quarter to a record 245.5 billion won from 140.3 billion won.

Growth in orders was led by the ASIC (application-specific integrated circuit) development segment. Orders in the segment rose 705 percent from a year earlier to 136.9 billion won. The company said a large North American HPC (high-performance computing) project order was the catalyst.

For the nine months through the third quarter, revenue rose 62 percent from a year earlier to 146.1 billion won, while the operating loss narrowed to 20.6 billion won from 35.3 billion won. The company said it expects a faster improvement in results from the fourth quarter on higher conversion of backlog into revenue and increased mass production volumes.

Semifive CEO Myunghyun Cho (조명현) said, "This result proves that the company has entered a phase of accelerating growth in the global AI ASIC market." He added, "Based on a record-high order backlog and a strong turbo engine of a high value-added mass production pipeline, we will further raise the pace of growth."