Ebara Corporation's order intake for chip-manufacturing equipment jumped in the six months to June, giving one of Japan's clearest industrial readings yet on how far the AI capital-spending wave has spread into equipment suppliers.
The Tokyo-listed pump and precision-equipment maker booked ¥636.3bn in group orders for the interim period, up 41.0% from a year earlier and the highest order intake the company has recorded for a six-month period. Revenue rose 9.4% to ¥490.8bn, up from ¥448.8bn a year earlier. Operating profit edged up only 1.2% to ¥50.7bn, while net profit attributable to shareholders rose 7.1% to ¥33.6bn, also a first-half record.
The driver was the Precision & Electronics segment, which supplies vacuum pumps, polishing equipment and related tools to semiconductor manufacturers. Orders in that segment rose 89.3% to ¥267.4bn, segment revenue rose 22.0% to ¥183.7bn, and segment profit rose 38.7% to ¥32.5bn. Ebara said customer factory utilization and capacity-expansion spending are both running high on AI-related demand, with orders tied to logic and foundry chipmakers leading the increase and memory-related orders also climbing.
| Segment | Orders | Orders YoY | Revenue | Revenue YoY | Segment profit/loss |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Precision & Electronics | ¥267.4bn | +89.3% | ¥183.7bn | +22.0% | ¥32.5bn |
| Energy | ¥112.6bn | +29.6% | ¥96.7bn | -11.3% | -¥0.8bn (vs ¥11.2bn a year earlier) |
| Construction & Industrial | ¥148.4bn | +18.3% | ¥129.6bn | +13.8% | ¥8.3bn |
| Infrastructure | ¥26.3bn | -15.6% | ¥32.2bn | -1.4% | ¥5.6bn |
| Environment | ¥80.8bn | +22.8% | ¥47.9bn | +13.9% | ¥6.7bn |
| Group total | ¥636.3bn | +41.0% | ¥490.8bn | +9.4% | ¥50.7bn (operating profit) |
That single segment did most of the work lifting group orders, but it did not translate into matching profit growth. Energy segment orders rose 29.6% to ¥112.6bn on large contract wins, yet segment revenue fell 11.3% to ¥96.7bn and the unit swung to a ¥0.8bn loss from an ¥11.2bn profit a year earlier, as maintenance demand normalized after a busier prior period. That reversal offset most of the gain from precision equipment, which is why group operating profit barely moved despite a 41% jump in orders.
Ebara used the stronger order momentum to raise its full-year targets for the year to December 2026: the annual orders forecast rose by ¥175.0bn to ¥1.245tn, and the revenue forecast rose by ¥33.0bn to ¥1.053tn. The company left its full-year operating profit guidance unchanged, an implicit signal that management expects the extra volume to arrive at similar, not richer, margins. The results also mark the first half of Ebara's new three-year plan, E-Plan2028, which the company has framed around group-wide cost and portfolio optimization to lift competitiveness and profitability rather than around any single AI-driven windfall.