UMC Q4 2025 Earnings Call - 22nm Mix Shift and Packaging, Photonics Push Set Stage for 2026-27 Upside

Conference Moderator, UMC: Welcome everyone to UMC’s 2025 fourth quarter earnings conference call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent background noise. After the presentation, there will be a question and answer session. Please follow the instructions given at the time if you would like to ask the question. For your information, this conference call is now being broadcasted live over the Internet. Webcast replay will be available within 2 hours after the conference has finished. Please visit our website, www.umc.com, under the Investor Relations, Investors Events section. Now, I would like to introduce Mr. Michael Ling, Head of Investor Relations at UMC. Mr. Ling, please begin.

Michael Ling, Head of Investor Relations, UMC: Thank you, and welcome to UMC’s conference call for the fourth quarter of 2025. I’m joined by Mr. Jason Wang, President of UMC, and Mr. Chih-tung Liu, the CFO of UMC. In a moment, we will hear our CFO present the fourth quarter financial results, followed by our president’s key message to address UMC’s focus and the first quarter 2026 guidance. Once our president and CFO complete their remarks, there will be a Q&A session. UMC’s quarterly financial reports are available at our website, www.umc.com, under the Investors Financials section. During this conference, we may make forward-looking statements based on management’s current expectations and beliefs. These forward-looking statements are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially, including the risks that may be beyond the company’s control.

For a more detailed description of this risk and uncertainties, please refer to our recent and subsequent filings with the SEC and the ROC securities authorities. During this conference, you may view our financial presentation material, which is being broadcast live through the Internet. Now, I would like to introduce UMC’s CFO, Mr. Chih-tung Liu, to discuss UMC’s fourth quarter 2025 financial results.

Chih-tung Liu, CFO, UMC: Thank you, Michael. I’d like to go through the Q4 2025 investor conference presentation material, which can be downloaded or viewed in real time from our website. Starting on page 4, the fourth quarter of 2025. Consolidated revenue was TWD 61.81 billion, with a gross margin around 30.7%. The net income attributable to the stockholder of the parent was TWD 10.06 billion, and the earnings per ordinary shares was 0.81 NT dollars. Utilization rate in the fourth quarter is stayed the same as the previous one, around 78%. For the sequential comparison, revenue grew 4.5% quarter over quarter to TWD 61.8 billion.

Gross margin improved to over 30% to now 30.7% or gross margin of TWD 18.95 billion. And, the non-operating income, remains similar to that of last quarter. And, the net income, overall attributed, is around TWD 10.05 billion, or EPS of 0.81 in Q4 of 2025. For year-over-year comparison on page six, revenue grew by 2.3% to reach TWD 237.5 billion for the whole year of 2025. Gross margin rate is around 29%, or TWD 68.9 billion. And, for the net income attributable to the shareholder of the parent for year 2025, is around 40 point...

41.7 billion TWD, or 17.6%, net income rate. EPS for 2025 was 3.34, which is a decline compared to that of 3.8 in 2024. On page seven, our balance sheet at the end of 2025. Cash amount is still more than 110 billion TWD, with total equity of the company is now 379.8 billion TWD at the end of 2025. For ASP on page eight, you can tell for the last three quarter or four, it pretty much remained similar level for our blended ASP for throughout the 2025.

For revenue breakdown on page 9, for quarterly comparison, the change is mainly showing in the increase in Asia and Europe, with now North America represent about 21% in Q4 of last year. For the full year breakdown on page 10, the change is similar. We see North America drop from 25% in 2024 to 22% in 2025. On page 11, IDM for Q4 revenue still represent about 20%, almost no change. But for the full year number on page 12, IDM account for 19%, increased by 3 percentage points to 19% in 2025. For quarterly revenue breakdown by application, it remains almost similar quarter-over-quarter on page 13.

For the annual performance on the application breakdown on page 4, consumer increased by 3 percentage points to 31% from 28% in the previous year. We continue to see 22 nanometer to be our key driver of growth for the recent quarters and also forward looking as well. 22 and 28 revenue in Q4 2025 now represent 36% of the total revenue pool. On page 16, for the full year, the increase of 22 and 28 revenue is 3 percentage points, and we also show about 2 percentage point increase in 14 nanometer on a year-over-year comparison. Capacity remained flat on quarter-over-quarter comparison base, but it will decline by roughly 1% due to the annual maintenance schedule.

On page 18, our latest forecast for 2026 CapEx plan is around $1.5 billion, which is slightly declined from $1.6 billion in the year of 2025. The above is a summary of UMC’s results for Q4 2025. More details are available in the report, which has been posted on our website. I will now turn the call over to President of UMC, Mr. Jason Wang.

Jason Wang, President, UMC: Thank you, Chih-tung. Good evening, everyone. Here I would like to share UMC’s fourth quarter results. In the fourth quarter, our results were in line with the guidance. With the flattish wafer shipments amid mild demand across most markets, the 4.5% revenue increase during the quarter was supported by favorable foreign exchange movement, as well as the sequential growth in our 22- and 28-nanometer systems, which continues to improve our product mix. With the 22- and 28-nanometer segment, 22-nanometer revenue increased to 31% quarter-on-quarter to a record high, accounting for more than 13% of total fourth quarter revenue. Looking at the full year, UMC delivered solid performance in 2025, with shipment increasing 12.3% and revenue in U.S. dollar up 5.3% year-on-year.

Going into the first quarter of 2026, we expect wafer demand to remain firm. UMC is confident that 2026 will be another growth year as we take out on our 22-nanometer platform accelerate, and other new solutions continue to gain business traction. We have been working hard to lay the foundation for our next phase of growth, investing for the future in both capacity and technology. In 2025, we complete the Phase 3 new Phase 3 facility at our Singapore Fab 12i, which is already playing a central role in supporting customers to diversify supply chain. At the same time, we are striving to expand our footprint in the U.S. through an innovative yet cost-effective mode of partnerships, such as our 12-nanometer collaboration with Intel and the recently announced MOU with the Polar Semiconductor.

The leadership UMC has built over the past few years across specialty technologies, including embedded high voltage, non-volatile memory, and BCD, has and will continue to sustain sustainable business growth. Looking ahead to 2026 and beyond, we expect advanced packaging and silicon photonics to serve as a new growth catalyst, positioning UMC to address the evolving needs of a high performance of application across AI, networking, consumer, automotive, and more. Now, let’s move on to first quarter 2026 guidance. Our wafer shipment will remain flat. ASP in US dollars will remain firm. Gross margin will be approximately in the high 20% range. Capacity utilization rate will be in the mid-70% range. Our 2026 cash-based CapEx budget will be $1.5 billion. That concludes my comments. Thank you all for your attention. Now, we are ready for questions.

Conference Moderator, UMC: Yes, thank you, President Wang. And ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin the question and answer session. If you have a question for any of today’s speakers, please press star key and number one on your telephone keypad, and you will enter the queue. After you are announced, please ask your question. If you find that your question has been answered before it is your turn to speak, please press star key and number two to cancel the queue.

Chih-tung Liu, CFO, UMC: ... Please press star one on your keypad to ask the question. Thank you. Our first question will be coming from Sunny Lin, UBS. Go ahead, please.

Sunny Lin, Analyst, UBS: Good afternoon. Thank you very much for taking my questions. I have a few questions. Number one, Jason, may we have your thoughts on overall market outlook for 2026, and then for semi versus foundry, and if UMC can continue to outgrow your addressable market for this year?

Jason Wang, President, UMC: Sure. Well, for 2026, we expect AI-related segment to remain as the primary growth driver in semi industry. And furthermore, with the continuous commercial deployment of edge AI applications, demand for chip using a general purpose server is also expected to rise. In contrast, the adverse effect of memory supply imbalance could put some pressure on specific consumer electronics, but overall, the semiconductor industry is projected to grow by mid-teens in 2026. The question for foundry market will remain strong and is the main contributor behind the low 20% growth projection in the foundry market this year.

On the other hand, although the memory pricing may impact demand of the foundry market, at this time, we at the UMC estimate that our addressable market will grow by low single-digit %, and UMC growth was expected to outperform the average growth of our addressable market.

Sunny Lin, Analyst, UBS: Got it. Thank you very much, Jason. So then my second question is on pricing. Lots of discussions and obviously, Chinese peers are raising pricing. So how should you think about the pricing outlook for mature foundry and for UMC through 2026? Will UMC be able to start to reflect better value? And if yes, which product categories should we expect more upside from here?

Jason Wang, President, UMC: Okay. Well, we anticipate a more favorable ASP environment in 2026 versus 2025. This outlook really reflects our disciplined pricing strategy and the positive impact from multiple reasons, product mix optimization, loading improvement, and reduced exposure to more commoditized market segments. We, as you’re referring to China players, expect the strong growth momentum in our 22-nanometer demand to support our product mix in 2026 as well. Overall, our pricing strategy remains consistent and is anchored to the value where we deliver technology differentiation and manufacturing excellence. So we do think the 2026 pricing environment is more favorable now. Now, the question about which product and, I mean, we don’t comment pricing on specific product or any specific node.

But in general, we do see the environment is more favorable now.

Sunny Lin, Analyst, UBS: No problem. That’s very helpful. And then a follow-up would be on the overall industry supply versus demand for the coming few years. TSMC, on the recent earnings conference, talked about the plan to optimize capacity for mature nodes to better support cloud AI demand in coming few years. So from your perspective, how should we think about the opportunity here? Are you starting to see more client engagement for new products in the coming few years?

Jason Wang, President, UMC: Oh, we’re always excited to see more customer engagement. So, but more importantly, we need to prepare ourselves to cope with the market dynamics, and we welcome any opportunity to support our customers. So we view this landscape shift as an opportunity to further optimize our product mix and gradually improve ASP and margin as well.

Sunny Lin, Analyst, UBS: Nope. Got, got it. Got it. And then maybe lastly, just on your Singapore expansion, how quickly are you planning to ramp capacity in 2026 and in 2027? And how should you think about the differentiations of products that you have for Singapore versus the Taiwan capacities for 22 and 28 nanometer? And then with that, how should we forecast the depreciation in 2026 and 2027?

Jason Wang, President, UMC: Well, first of all, for the year of 2026, the capacity increase will be around 1.2% year-over-year for us. And for our Singapore facility, the expansion will start in the second half of 2026, and the capacity deployment ramp from second half of 2026 will continue into the 2027. In terms of the nodes available in our Singapore facility, it is our strategy that we have a geographically diverse and efficient footprint between Taiwan, Singapore, Japan, US, and from a technology node coverage standpoint, we would like to cover most of the nodes, so the customer has a benefit of crossing different site supports. Yeah.

Chih-tung Liu, CFO, UMC: As for the depreciation forecast, we are looking for some like low teens annual increase in the full-year depreciation expenses. As for next year, we don’t have the exact number yet, but it’s very likely to be the similar amount for 2026.

Jason Wang, President, UMC: ... So in a way, we will see the depreciation curve to peak either this year or next year, with very similar numbers.

Felix Pan, Analyst, KGI: Got it. Thank you very much.

Conference Moderator, UMC: Thank you. Next one, Hause Lu, Bank of America. Go ahead, please.

Hause Lu, Analyst, Bank of America: Yes. Hi, Jason. Congratulations on the results, and thanks for taking my questions. I would actually like to follow up on the pricing. If we look at the like-for-like pricing environments, based on your current mid- to high-70% of the utilization, if we strip out any of the consideration of the product mix improvement, are you able to improve or just to pass on your higher manufacturing costs or material costs to your customers at this stage? Or you still receive meaningful pushback from your customers? Thanks.

Jason Wang, President, UMC: Well, I mean, the pricing discussion is always ongoing. The overall pricing strategy remains consistent. As I mentioned earlier, in 2026, we do see some market dynamic changes. So for certain customers, we do have some adjusted pricing upward. And so, and for certain customer, we still have some of the pricing, I mean, the apply the one-time pricing adjustment at the beginning of year to support the their market share expansion, as well as the competitiveness. So, net-net, we think the environment is more favorable now in 2026.

Hause Lu, Analyst, Bank of America: Hmm. Okay. Yeah. So when you talk about, but you are supporting your customer to gain market share by strengthening their cost structure, do you mean you are actually adjusting down your pricing for those customers, or it is actually up for this year?

Jason Wang, President, UMC: We have a mix of that. For certain customer, we have adjusted pricing upward, and for certain customer, we will apply the one-time price adjustment downward, yes.

Hause Lu, Analyst, Bank of America: Okay, got it. And then just on near term, a couple of your fabless customers recently talked about earlier and also stronger inventory restocking because of the memory price hike. I was just wondering, what’s impacts your first quarter outlook here, if your customers are seeing stronger inventory pulling in the traditional low season, why is your shipment for first quarter is still relatively flat? And then, what’s your put and take for the first quarter overall business outlook? Just wondering whether, which part of the business is actually relatively stronger and weak. Thank you.

Jason Wang, President, UMC: Well, for Q1, by segment, we are actually in line with our addressable market seasonality. We didn’t see significant changes due to the inventory restocking. But if you’re looking into by applications, we expect the revenue contribution from consumer segment to increase, driven by the Wi-Fi and DTV and set-top box, while the revenue from the communication and automotive will decline due to a softer demand of ISP and DDI products.

Hause Lu, Analyst, Bank of America: Okay, that’s pretty clear. And then since you just mentioned about the seasonality, are you expecting this year’s seasonality to look pretty similar to the previous few years, that first quarter could be relatively light, and second quarter and third quarter, you will be able to see relative strength into the year?

Jason Wang, President, UMC: If I can probably provide you with this. If we look at the whole year, with the new project of multiple specialty technology across the embedded high voltage, non-volatile memory, power management IC, RFSOI, it supports the end market in communication, consumer, automotive, and AI server, which will ramp in second half 2026. We were looking at this year that our second half will outperform the first half, I’m sorry. The second half will be better than the first half. So, that may deviate from the traditional seasonality. But as far as for us, we think the overall shipment for the year will be a growth year, and as well as second half will be better than the first half.

Hause Lu, Analyst, Bank of America: Okay, yeah, and last question before I’m back in the queue is that, just based on the comment you had just now, what is the underlying market unit demand assumption you have right now? Is it smartphone business? The overall smartphone market will actually grow or decline based on your current base case scenario, that second half will be better, or it is actually already factoring a relatively more conservative expectation than smartphone, TV, PC, these kind of consumer markets will actually see a unit decline? Thanks.

Jason Wang, President, UMC: Well, with the current forecast for our customer, I mean, we do see gains on all product segments, all applications. We do see some share gains on those applications. So, right now, the forecast does show us that more of a share gain instead of market end market demand associated.

Hause Lu, Analyst, Bank of America: Okay, thank you so much, Jason. That’s pretty helpful.

Jason Wang, President, UMC: Thank you.

Conference Moderator, UMC: Thank you. Next one, Felix Pan, KGI. Go ahead, please.

Felix Pan, Analyst, KGI: Hi, thank you for taking my question. I just have a couple of questions about the future growth driver, particularly in the remarks you mentioned about advanced packaging and silicon photonics. So my first question will be, besides the interposer, what else we might have some engagement for advanced packaging and for in the post, what’s the capacity expansion plan for 2026? And, my second question will be, the silicon photonics, particularly in the Singapore fab. A lot of rumor about your potential customer. Is there any color, any client engagement, or, any contribution can generate from this segment? Any color will be grateful. Thanks.

Jason Wang, President, UMC: Oh, okay. A big question. So, yeah, let me see if I can cover, cover that. And well, if, if I look back, I mean, I understand you asked for 2026, but let me look back this. We have to leave a very solid 2025 performance with a 12.3% shipment growth and 5.3% revenue growth, which outperform our addressable market. This result is supported by our differentiated 22-nanometer technology and other specialty offering across those 12-inch and 8-inch amid a broad class world-class market, a broad-based market demand recovery. And building on the 2025, we do view 2026 as a year of both continuity and evolution. We believe the UMC will once again taking shares and outperform its addressable market, and we will also see several positive inflation.

First of all, as our guidance suggests, we are seeing a more favorable pricing environment. This will result in tighter supply globally, as well as our differentiated technology and geographical footprint, which will drive our growth for the next few years. We are on track with our 12-nanometer cooperation with Intel, which should start to see tape out in 2027. Now, that’s the existing one. And your question about silicon photonics and advanced packaging. Secondly, we see 2026 as a pivotal year for those high performance, high potential opportunities such as, you know, like the silicon photonics and advanced packaging. And we are making those deliberate choices, you know, working with, you know, imec to invest and to scale them into a significant driver for our future. If you ask specifically about the advanced packaging, there are two distinct opportunities for advanced packaging.

One we call enabler, the other we call tent expander. Let us explain this. I know it’s a bit long, but bear with me. So the, for enabler, we are seeing the 2.5D and 3D packaging, as well as the chiplets move well beyond just the data center and ultra high-end chips, and start to spread across the broader market. Over time, we expect advanced packaging to be adopted even on mature nodes. A good example is RFSOI. We have mentioned many times, where we’re already in production. In addition to the RFSOI, we are also exploring other applications with the leading partners and believe we are at least 2-3 years ahead of our competition. What this really means for customers is better power efficiency, small form factors, and more differentiated products. And for UMC, it is a strategic win-win.

We believe our leadership in advanced packaging will enable us to capture more shares, sustain our higher ASP and drive better margin in many of our already established business in the long run. On the tent expander, we also believe that advanced packaging will help UMC address new opportunities. For example, customers are coming to us for AI-related applications. This is not necessarily just the XPU related, but we are adding value by stacking memory with the logic, adding DTC to the stack or selling the discrete DTC. We are also working with our partner to enable a total solution. Meanwhile, we are working with more than 10 customers in advanced packaging currently. They expect more than 20 new tape outs in 2026. We foresee revenue in 2027 will be a significant year for us.

The capacity question you have, that capacity planning will be aligned with the customer ramp plan and market outlook. You also asked about the silicon photonics. For silicon photonics, we are developing solutions which includes PIC, OIO, OCS, and CPO. Our collaboration is to deliver an industry standard PDK to our customer in 2027. In addition to platform preparation, we also work with the customer on captive technology of a 12-inch PIC, aiming for portable product, which is expected to ramp this year. We’ll also combine our advanced packaging know-how with the silicon photonics, as many of the applications require the integration and different substrate, process, technology, and materials. Looking ahead to achieve 1.6 P bandwidth and beyond, we’re working with both customer and vendor for the path finding on heterogeneous material such as the TFLN.

Those technologies will also be used in additional applications such as quantum computing. Again, we hope to integrate the new material via advanced packaging technology as well. So those are all integrated all together. That’s why I gave you a bit of a longer answer. I hope that explains it.

Felix Pan, Analyst, KGI: ... Yeah, okay, thank you. But, just, let me just quick follow up and rephrase my question. So for Silicon Photonics, what’s the earliest timetable we can see the revenue contribution, like, by most likely?

Jason Wang, President, UMC: For the 12-inch PIC, for the programmable product, we’ll be expecting to ramp this year.

Felix Pan, Analyst, KGI: Okay. And about the, because as I know about the interposer currently, the bottom interposer is also the bottleneck for our partner to expand their capacity. So, is there any color we can how much capacity growth for the interposer, like how much year-on-year growth or something like that?

Jason Wang, President, UMC: Well, right now, the capacity planning will be aligned with the customer for the 2027 ramp.

Felix Pan, Analyst, KGI: Okay.

Jason Wang, President, UMC: We will probably guide, you know, provide you some clarity, when that comes.

Felix Pan, Analyst, KGI: Okay.

Jason Wang, President, UMC: Right now, the 2026, we’ll focus on the tape out.

Felix Pan, Analyst, KGI: Okay, thank you.

Conference Moderator, UMC: Thank you. Next one, Gokul Hariharan, J.P. Morgan. Go ahead, please.

Gokul Hariharan, Analyst, J.P. Morgan: Yeah, hi. Thanks for taking my question. Hi, Jason. Could you go a little bit deeper into the advanced packaging comment that you made? What is the involvement level of UMC in some of these advanced packaging solutions? Are you doing full stack, or is it basically like previously, where you were largely focused on the interposer side of the equation? And in terms of the tape outs that you have, what are the nature of these tape outs? Are these mostly data center ASIC related products, or is this a much wider array of products rather than just data center ASIC?

Jason Wang, President, UMC: Sure. The... Well, first of all, we have reported, you know, in our advanced packaging space, we have building out some of the capability from wafer to wafer.

Gokul Hariharan, Analyst, J.P. Morgan: Mm-hmm

Jason Wang, President, UMC: ... stacking and the TSE, as well as the interposer, the 2.5D, and the many different capabilities. And then, the way we see it, like I explained, for the enabler is we can apply those to many of the current product that we currently serve. And then, and one good example I mentioned is the RFSoI. So we have a wafer-to-wafer hybrid bonding with the RF, RFSoI solution for the mobile space already. And then, some of the capability can be built for the DTC.

Gokul Hariharan, Analyst, J.P. Morgan: Mm-hmm

Jason Wang, President, UMC: For the stacking, and as well as some of the customers looking at discrete DTC already. And we’re combining some of the capability into stacking, the logic and the memory. Of course, we do not provide memory ourselves, so the customer will have to provide memory wafer to us, and so then we can provide the wafer-to-wafer hybrid bonding on those. So, on one hand, the way we see it is advanced packaging is a capability per se, and but it applies to a product, and then we call it an enabler and also extender.

Meanwhile, the product coverage is all the way from the mobile space, power management discussion, the AI-related pro-for AI-related product and also for the BCD application as well. So, they will... We, it’s our belief is for a form factor reason or for the higher performance reason, and many different application will start adapting the advanced packaging. So, we think this is going to be a broad, broad success on the advanced packaging space.

Gokul Hariharan, Analyst, J.P. Morgan: Got it. Any plans to further expand your interposer capacity? I think we had expanded, I think, up to 6K and then kind of stopped it there. Now, some of that demand seems to be kind of coming back for one of your customers in China. Is there any plans to expand the capacity further?

Jason Wang, President, UMC: There are discussions around that. Right now, if you look at the technology itself, we have some common tools in place already, which we can leverage, you know, off of our 40-nanometer capacity, off of our 65-nanometer capacity. From those common tools base, we’re already allocating to this area. Now, for the unique tools, then we will put into plan for the future expansion and, you know, for the customer ramp profile, and we believe that will probably happen in 2027. For the unique-

Gokul Hariharan, Analyst, J.P. Morgan: Got it. Understood. That’s clear. Another question I had is on the just your expectations for the communication consumer segment, which is north of 70% of revenue, given all the concerns about smartphone PC. How are you budgeting for this? Are your customers telling you that they’re really concerned about this memory cost inflation, or right now you still don’t really hear that from the customers, that that’s going to be a big issue from a UMC perspective, going through the year?

Jason Wang, President, UMC: Well, we’re also conscious about that topic. As of today, we have not observed any demand impact on our customer’s forecast for the year, despite that recent surge in that price. And our technology predominantly supported customers addressing the higher end of the market segment, where the demand tends to be more resilient in the past and in the period of memory tightness. You know, so because the supply usually typically prioritize in such high-end, higher value device. While we remain attentive to the potential impact on the memory market, and our current assessment is that any potential headwind are probably manageable, and we’ll continue monitoring the situation closely with our customer together.

Gokul Hariharan, Analyst, J.P. Morgan: Got it. My last question is on the geographic split of revenues. I think, could you talk a little bit about the Intel 12-nanometer progress, and any color on how you will be booking revenues or profits from this partnership, given the fab is the Intel Fab, while you are essentially the provider of customers and some degree of IP as well into it? And secondly, on the Xiamen Fab, what is the strategy for the Xiamen Fab, medium to long term, given many of your semiconductor peers in Taiwan have kind of progressively exited capacity in mainland China?

Jason Wang, President, UMC: Well, for the 12nm project with Intel, overall, the 12nm collaboration project with Intel continues to advance smoothly. We remain on schedule to deliver the PDK and associated IP to customer in 2026. Furthermore, we anticipate the product tapeouts will commence in 2027, making the significant step toward to a commercialized deployment and future revenue growth. Right now, UMC and Intel are working closely to ensure successful tapeout and-

Gokul Hariharan, Analyst, J.P. Morgan: Mm-hmm.

Jason Wang, President, UMC: An efficient framework for the mass production. As the project advance, it is expected to further strengthen UMC’s position in the U.S., right? For customer as well as for us, because the geo diversification manufacture. Right now, the application on the 12-nanometer collaboration, including products from digital TV, Wi-Fi connectivity, and high-speed interface products. In terms of the business model and, you know, we, we, you know, it’s probably not, it’s not available for us to comment, you know, but it, it is a win-win strategy that we see and will be very synergistic, you know, for both party as well as for our customer, and we, we have very high confidence this will be a win-win model.

Gokul Hariharan, Analyst, J.P. Morgan: Okay. And any, any thoughts for the Xiamen capacity? Yeah.

Jason Wang, President, UMC: Yes. For the Xiamen, it is. You know, I kind of touched that earlier as well, you know. I look at Xiamen, not just Xiamen itself, is, you know, our core part of our competitive advantage is our geographically diverse manufacturing footprint. And the, Xiamen, you know, plays one of the, you know, important, place for us, and particularly for the, local customer. So the, and at this point, the fab is actually at, a full capacity. We’re running at a full utilization as well. And we see we’re continuing seeing many different engagement come into this, and, we, we will, you know, across regionally, optimize this, you know, from the customer engagement and, product loading standpoint.

Gokul Hariharan, Analyst, J.P. Morgan: Okay. Just one more on blended ASP. I think, Jason, you mentioned that the ASP environment is more favorable this year, but overall utilization is still in the mid-70s% as of Q1, right? So do you expect that this year we could see a scenario that we could see blended ASPs moving up, meaningfully, like 5%-10% or something like that, like we have had in the past? Or that requires a much higher level of utilization, that is probably not happening this year, given your low single-digit foundry growth expectation.

Jason Wang, President, UMC: Sure. I mean, the high utilization is one of the important factors, but that’s not the only factor. You know, we want to make sure the pricing strategy is enabled, not only ourselves and our customers to be competitive as well. So, but we do see the pricing environment is getting more favorable to foundry because the loading reason. But the magnitude of that, we probably have to continue manage it, you know, and if we have a clear view, we’ll share that with you.

Gokul Hariharan, Analyst, J.P. Morgan: Got it. Yeah. Thank you.

Jason Wang, President, UMC: Sure.

Conference Moderator, UMC: Thank you. Next one, Alex Chang, BNP. Go ahead, please.

Alex Chang, Analyst, BNP: Thank you for taking my question. I just have a very quick one. As I saw, the company announced that it started the mass production of the SuperFlash Generation 4. Just wondering, how much revenue contribution from the non-volatile memory business in the past quarter or maybe past year? And also, how much revenue is contributed by the power management ICs for the server-related applications? Thank you.

Jason Wang, President, UMC: Well, I mean, we don’t have a breakdown, provide, and the way that we break it down is based on the specialty technology that includes the high voltage and non-volatile memory and the BCD space. Right now, the specialty revenue representing about 50% of overall revenue, and I can let you know, the high voltage is about 30% of that, and the rest of that, I would say, is combination of the non-volatile memory as well as the BCD.

Bruce Lu, Analyst, Goldman Sachs: ... Thank you very much.

Conference Moderator, UMC: Thank you. Next one, Laura Chen, Citi, go ahead, please.

Laura Chen, Analyst, Citi: Hello. Hi, thank you for taking my question. Good afternoon, gentlemen. I just want to follow up on the depreciation rate and also the gross margin outlook. Jason, you mentioned that the pricing environment seems to be improving and more favorable, and together with the firm shipment and the better product mix, as well as utilization rate. So how should we think about the gross margin trend? You guided that will be high 20% for Q1, but with these variables, factors, should we, what should we think about the margins throughout the year? That’s my first question.

Chih-tung Liu, CFO, UMC: Well, yes, when gross margin can be highly dependent upon the utilization rate, is the product mix, depreciation, and foreign exchange rate. So, there’s a lot of variables. So beyond this quarter, it’s difficult for us to give a firm outlook. For the first quarter guidance, which is high 20s, it’s mainly due to the higher cost, especially the higher depreciation expenses. As I mentioned, it will grow by low 10s in the full year of 2026. As for 2026, we will continue to cope with the higher depreciation expenses, as well as the other inflationary pressure for our production, raw material and other costs.

To mitigate and cope with the headwinds, we will continue with our cost reduction efforts and also all the activities to improve our productivity and drive operation efficiency. These measures hopefully will help UMC to deliver a stable EBITDA margin and ensure our long-term financial resilience to remain intact. As a matter of fact, our 2025 EBITDA margin is actually a good improvement compared to that of 2024.

Laura Chen, Analyst, Citi: Yeah, sure. Thank you very much. And also, I think, for the advanced packaging and, as well as the silicon photonics is, one of the key things that UMC may have a great opportunity. We know that UMC has already working on, advanced packagings, previously on interposer. Probably, now we’ll see more various, different design. So, could you, share with us what about the revenue contributions of your, advanced packaging right now, and how would that look like in 2-3 years?

Chih-tung Liu, CFO, UMC: Well, currently, the interposer was, you know, exposed to very limited customer base and also narrow application. While we have engaged with more than 10 customers and expecting more than 20 new tape outs in 2026, we do see, foresee that revenue of a packaging, advanced packaging growth in 2027 will be significant.

Laura Chen, Analyst, Citi: So significant means that, could that be like 5, 10% or higher?

Chih-tung Liu, CFO, UMC: Oh, I expecting half more than that.

Laura Chen, Analyst, Citi: Okay.

Chih-tung Liu, CFO, UMC: But I mean, if you’re referring to the overall revenue contribution, you know, we will probably give you more color, you know, guidance later. But if you’re just looking at the packaging itself, it’s gonna be significantly larger than what we’re shipping today. Yeah.

Laura Chen, Analyst, Citi: Okay. Thank you very much.

Conference Moderator, UMC: Thank you. Next we’ll have Bruce Lu, Goldman Sachs, for questions. Go ahead, please.

Bruce Lu, Analyst, Goldman Sachs: Okay. Thank you for taking my questions. I want to go a little bit deeper for the silicon photonics. I mean, as you might know, that your peers, like GlobalFoundries, Tower Semi, are pretty vocal about that. Can you tell us how big you think the addressable market for silicon photonics for you guys in two years, and how do you win market? What is the competitive advantage for you in this business though, I mean, other than working with IMEC?

Chih-tung Liu, CFO, UMC: Well, I mean, the Singapore facility is not going to only serving the silicon photonics. Singapore facility is one of our important manufacturing sites. You know, it serves our worldwide customer, all different applications. And so it’s part of our geographical diverse manufacturing strategy. So, you know-

Bruce Lu, Analyst, Goldman Sachs: No, no, no, my question is for Silicon Photonics business strategy.

Chih-tung Liu, CFO, UMC: The silicon photonics strategy-

Bruce Lu, Analyst, Goldman Sachs: Yes.

Chih-tung Liu, CFO, UMC: in Singapore offsite. So

Bruce Lu, Analyst, Goldman Sachs: No, no, no, no. I’m sorry. Let me rephrase my question.

Chih-tung Liu, CFO, UMC: Sure.

Bruce Lu, Analyst, Goldman Sachs: So the growth driver for UMC, one of the, the CPO, I’m assuming, is, you know, having more business for, in the silicon photonics. You know, in, for your peers, like, you know, GlobalFoundries or, Tower Semi, they are pretty vocal about the, you know, silicon photonics and have, you know, meaningful revenue contribution already. For UMC perspective, you know, what is your, competitive advantage for UMC to win this business, and how, how much business you can win, or how big is the addressable market for you in two years?

Chih-tung Liu, CFO, UMC: Got it. So for the silicon photonics, our strategy is simple. Our collaboration with imec allow us to deliver the industry standard PDK to our customer in 2027, particularly in 12-inch.

Jason Wang, President, UMC: ... So many of our competitors, as today at 8-inch, and we are focused on this in 12-inch. And as we believe the 12-inch will have that advantage. And right now, we already have certain products that proven that performance is better and on the profitable product, and which we would expect to ramp this year. And meanwhile, we’re also combining with the silicon photonics with our advanced packaging know-how. So for many different type of applications, then we can integrate that. So by doing that, we think we will be even providing even more value from advanced packaging, combining with silicon photonics at 12-inch. I think that’s where we believe we have competitive.

Bruce Lu, Analyst, Goldman Sachs: But that’s mostly for plug-in, right? Because if you don’t have the EIC, you know, the pure CPO product might not be your key growth driver.

Jason Wang, President, UMC: You’re correct. We’re now looking at a completely CPO package. We’re looking at, particularly in the PIC and OIO and OTN.

Bruce Lu, Analyst, Goldman Sachs: I see. I understand. It’s very clear. Next one is, and we do see that the progress for the Intel project for 12-nanometer is pretty smooth. I just want to know, what is the next step? I mean, when we can see a further collaboration in 10, 7, and beyond? I mean, obviously, whatever you said, you know, the advantage at 12-inch, you can also use the same argument for 7-nanometer. What’s stopping you to doing that, to do that?

Jason Wang, President, UMC: Well, you’re also right on that, and our focus right now is on delivering the 12-nanometer platform to customer. In the future, should it make sense for both UMC and Intel as well as our customer, you know, we will surely consider expanding our collaboration to other derivatives as well as the technologies. Yeah.

Bruce Lu, Analyst, Goldman Sachs: But what is stopping now? What is the showstopper now?

Jason Wang, President, UMC: It’s not a... I won’t call it stopping. I think the focus is a focus on 12 nanometer. We have to deliver the 12 nanometer today, and make sure that we deliver that program. We executed well, and I think anything that makes sense from there on, like you said, I think there will be a discussion. Yes.

Bruce Lu, Analyst, Goldman Sachs: I see. Because we are already assumed that you can deliver something in 27. So, you know, given that working for 7, maybe you need 2 to years, we want to see the, you know, the project kick off as soon as possible.

Jason Wang, President, UMC: Right.

Bruce Lu, Analyst, Goldman Sachs: That’s all my question. Thank you.

Jason Wang, President, UMC: Sure.

Conference Moderator, UMC: As a reminder, please press star key and number one on your keypad if you would like to ask the question. Thank you. Now we’ll have our last question, Sappho, Neuberger Berman. Go ahead, please.

Bruce Lu, Analyst, Goldman Sachs0: Hi, Jason Wang. It’s been a while, and congrats on the progress you’ve made throughout these couple years. I just have a few questions. The first one is on the market dynamics. I think previously, someone has asked about the TSMC shrinking or defocusing on this, the mature foundry process. It looks like not just TSMC, but also the other foundries seem to be doing the same thing. And also, Powerchip recently just reached agreement with Micron, selling its Tongluo fab, which means they’re trying to streamline and reorg some of the foundry process too.

So it seems like there is a lot of supply is kind of like being taken away because of the crowding out effects from the AI and crowding out some of these older nodes. On the supply side, seems to be that’s actually decreasing. And on the demand side, if you look at, I think TI just reported overnight, I think it seems like there’s been more obvious recovery on the analog MCU space. So on demand side, that’s also improving, but the supply side, that’s actually decreasing. So it looks like supply-demand dynamics is moving to a more favorable situation. I think that explains why you were mentioning the pricing dynamics is favorable this year. So I’m just curious about your view.

If you try to compare the current, like the mature foundries dynamic situation right now, versus, I mean, back in 2021, when there was a severe shortage back then, how would you compare this time around versus last cycle?

Jason Wang, President, UMC: Well, I mean, that’s a really good question. I mean, we, you know, we saw some of the market movement, the changes. We also, you know, did a deep dive on this, demand and supply outlook, and we think whether this is short term or long term. If you look at the driver behind this, you know, we see, you mentioned, this is truly more the AI phenomenon ripple effect. And so, we see that AI demand, we meant to be very strong, at the least in the foreseeable future... and I think this momentum will continue driving the overall demand.

And meanwhile, in many of this, the capability, AI capability will proliferating to even the other end market devices, so in the edge AI as well. So we think this will continue. And from an economic standpoint, building any of the mature facility is not justifiable. So we do think this could last longer compared to the COVID time, and I think this situation could be more of a structural going forward. But again, this is at a very early stage of this market movement, so we will pay attention to it and we’ll continue monitoring the progress. Meanwhile, like I said earlier, I think it is a more favorable pricing environment, but more importantly, we need to prepare ourselves to cope with this market dynamic.

So we are welcoming all the opportunities that, you know, for us to engage in supporting the customer, but the important focus today is we have to get ourselves ready to capture those opportunities. Yeah.

Bruce Lu, Analyst, Goldman Sachs0: Got it. Another question I have is your earlier comments on the pricing. I think you offer some of the annual, maybe some discount to some of our strategic clients for their share again, but also net-net wise, and you also raise, seems to be pricing is going up for majority of the clients, so net-net is going to still be the, going to ASP still be positive. But I’m just curious about for those clients that you’re offering some discount at the beginning of the year, would it down the road if the next few months or quarter situation has become tighter, and would you be able to reprice with these customers?

Jason Wang, President, UMC: I mean, just those discussions will be ongoing. You know, we’re always working with our customer to reflect the market dynamics as well as the cost increases. So, you know, I sure, you know, I believe this conversation will surely happen. You know, it happened in the past, it will happen now, and it will happen in the future. So, you know, this pricing discussion will continue, and I think customer understand that, and then we just have to continue monitoring the market dynamic and maintain our competitiveness on both our, us, the customer and ourselves.

Bruce Lu, Analyst, Goldman Sachs0: Yeah, well, so on that, because of some of the, the pricing that started to effective on January first this year, this was actually negotiated already in fourth quarter last year, right?

Jason Wang, President, UMC: There’s some alignment on that, on both volume and the pricing. So if the volume has changed, of course, that’s a different topic. So, there are some volume dynamics in that as well.

Bruce Lu, Analyst, Goldman Sachs0: Yeah. My question is actually that because a lot of the pricing that effective on January first, beginning of the year, was actually nego- communicated, a month or two months ago before that, toward the end of last year, when the time that the supply-demand dynamics haven’t been really that tight as compared to some of the changes that happened in the just past couple weeks. Am I getting that right?

Jason Wang, President, UMC: Yeah, you’re right. Yeah, but those also is on certain conditions. So given the condition has changed, there’s some of the pricing are dynamic.

Bruce Lu, Analyst, Goldman Sachs0: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. That is what I’m trying to discuss with you. Because we also saw a lot of the other different components or different subsectors within the tech or semi supply chain that, like such as memory, I think the pricing were still down in July, August, but all of a sudden, September, prices are going up. So I’m just curious about that. Because when you negotiated some of this discount, months ago, the supply-demand dynamics was not the same as today. So things remain fluid, dynamic, and it’s still going to be flexible, and it’s going to be dynamic and open for changes down the road if things are moving more favorably.

Jason Wang, President, UMC: I think the core of the pricing strategy is that it has to be consistent, and it has to anchor with the value that we deliver, and also the customer competitiveness. That is the core. Then usually that is how we centering about the pricing discussion. So that core is not compromised. Now, if the condition has changed, yes, they always have some flexibility to it. So, you know, one is called, you know, pricing strategy and position, and another is called pricing negotiation. So there will be some flexibility, yes.

Bruce Lu, Analyst, Goldman Sachs0: Yeah, and the condition has started to change now.

Jason Wang, President, UMC: Yes.

Bruce Lu, Analyst, Goldman Sachs0: Okay, got it.

Jason Wang, President, UMC: So we do think the pricing discussion will be more favorable now, yes.

Bruce Lu, Analyst, Goldman Sachs0: Okay, cool. Thank you, and Happy New Year.

Jason Wang, President, UMC: Yeah, you too.

Conference Moderator, UMC: Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we thank you for all your questions. That concludes today’s Q&A session. I’ll turn things over to UMC, Head of IR, for closing remarks. Thank you.

Michael Ling, Head of Investor Relations, UMC: Thank you for attending this conference today. We appreciate your questions. As always, if you have any additional follow-up questions, please feel free to contact ir@umc.com. Have a good day.

Conference Moderator, UMC: Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, that concludes our conference for fourth quarter 2025. Thank you for your participation in UMC’s conference. There will be a webcast replay within two hours. Please visit www.umc.com under the Investors Events section. You may now disconnect. Thank you again. Goodbye.