Advantest, the Tokyo-listed maker of semiconductor test equipment, raised its earnings guidance for the year to March 2027 just three months after its last forecast. The company now expects full-year sales of ¥1.714tn, up from ¥1.42tn, operating profit of ¥846.0bn, up from ¥627.5bn, and net profit attributable to owners of ¥660.0bn, up from ¥465.5bn. Its basic earnings-per-share forecast rises to ¥911.64 from ¥641.61.
| Metric | April 2026 Forecast | July 2026 Revision | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Net sales | ¥1.42tn | ¥1.714tn | +20.7% |
| Operating profit | ¥627.5bn | ¥846.0bn | +34.8% |
| Pretax profit | ¥629.0bn | ¥891.0bn | +41.7% |
| Net profit (parent) | ¥465.5bn | ¥660.0bn | +41.8% |
| EPS (basic) | ¥641.61 | ¥911.64 | - |
The upgrade follows a record quarter. In the three months to June 30, 2026, sales rose 39.3% year-on-year to ¥367.5bn, operating profit rose 53.3% to ¥190.0bn, and net profit rose 93.8% to ¥174.8bn, all quarterly highs for the company. The Test Systems segment, which covers chip testers, posted sales of ¥333.6bn, up 38.7%, with segment profit up 50.3% to ¥190.7bn, driven by demand for SoC testers used on AI and high-performance-computing chips and memory testers for high-performance DRAM.
A caveat on the headline profit growth: financial income of ¥44.68bn included a ¥41.08bn one-off valuation gain on financial instruments tied to strategic investments. Strip that out and the 53.3% rise in operating profit is the cleaner signal of underlying demand, since pretax profit's 92.9% jump and net profit's 93.8% jump both benefited from the one-off gain.
Advantest said demand for testing inference-focused AI semiconductors is running well ahead of the assumptions built into its April forecast. It now expects the calendar-2026 chip market to top $1tn and the tester market to reach a record size, and it has raised its own estimate of the calendar-2026 tester market by roughly 19% at the midpoint versus its prior estimate.
To keep up, the company is pulling forward capacity expansion across its supply chain and raising its research and development budget for the year to ¥110.0bn from ¥100.0bn, alongside capital expenditure of ¥50.0bn, up from ¥45.0bn. The new guidance assumes a yen rate of ¥150 to the dollar and ¥170 to the euro for the remaining nine months of the year, a stronger yen than the ¥159 and ¥185 rates recorded in the first quarter, when a weaker yen against the dollar had helped lift results. Advantest said tensions in the Middle East could raise some logistics costs but is not currently expecting a direct hit to earnings. The company has not yet published a dividend forecast for the year to March 2027; the disclosure leaves that line blank.