Semiconductor circuits are patterned with photoresist before etching or ion implantation. Once those steps are complete, the remaining resist must be removed cleanly to reduce defects in the next process.
Core idea PSK should be evaluated through equipment adoption, customer capital spending, and the durability of parts and service revenue, rather than through the broad theme of process scaling alone.
PR Strip Cleans the Wafer for the Next Process. The company's official product portfolio includes photoresist-removal and dry-cleaning systems. Incomplete removal can cause contamination and defects, so uniform performance under the relevant process conditions matters.
PR strip does not create a visible structure in the way etching or deposition equipment does, but it supports yield across repeated process steps. Even when the number of steps increases, improvements in tool productivity can change how many systems customers need.
Customer Adoption Determines the Equipment Market. Before a tool can be used in a particular process, it must pass evaluation with the customer's wafers and recipes. Completing development or displaying a system at a trade show does not confirm production-line adoption.
Qualification by one customer also cannot be treated as an order from another. Each fab and process has different conditions and may require additional evaluation.
First-Quarter 2026 Profitability Is Confirmed in Official Results. PSK reported first-quarter 2026 revenue of about KRW 156.6 billion and operating profit of about KRW 47.2 billion. Official IR materials released in May 2026 again identified PR strip and dry cleaning as major equipment categories.
Equipment orders can cluster by quarter, so the same margin should not be assumed to recur automatically. PSK's disclosures and results must also be kept separate from those of its holding company, PSK Holdings; backlog and the next quarter's acceptance schedule should be checked.
Parts and Service Continue After Installation. Consumable parts, maintenance, and process-improvement services remain necessary after equipment is delivered. This revenue depends more on the installed base and utilization than on investment in new fabs.
Equipment revenue and parts and service revenue can have different margins and recurrence. They should be assessed only to the extent that the latest business report discloses the product mix.
Look for Actual Orders, Not Just Capital-Spending Headlines. Even when a memory or foundry company announces a large investment plan, its budget is not allocated equally across every process tool. The new line's process configuration and reuse of existing equipment are important variables.
Reading contract disclosures together with inventory, receivables, and operating cash flow shows whether customer investment has turned into actual PSK deliveries and cash collection.
Translating additional PR-removal cycles into orders. If removal steps rise from eight to ten per wafer while monthly wafer input remains 100,000, the number of process cycles rises 25%, from 800,000 to 1 million. If existing equipment has only 15% spare capacity, discussions about additional tools may begin.
If shorter process time or improved utilization absorbs the additional 25%, stop short of concluding that new equipment is required.
Only by comparing removal steps multiplied by wafer input against existing processing capacity can readers tell whether scaling actually leads to PR-strip equipment orders.
Check your understanding
- Did you understand the role of PR strip in the process?
- Did you distinguish a developed tool from customer adoption?
- Did you avoid treating one quarter's margin as a long-term level?
- Did you separate equipment revenue from service revenue?
Verification date: July 24, 2026. Checked against official company, product, IR, and issuer-disclosure materials. Undisclosed customers, volumes, prices, market shares, and forecasts are not presented as facts. This article is not investment advice. This English article is a translated learning resource, not investment advice.