ViTrox to focus on Asia expansion plan

PETALING JAYA: ViTrox Corp Bhd, the Penang-based technology company that is very likely to miss its target dubbed '555 strategy' of hitting RM500 million in revenue and 500 staff by end of 2015, will now be switching its target to the 'Asia expansion strategy' of focusing on China, Taiwan, Japan, Korea, Vietnam, Philippines and Indonesian markets.
Besides the "Asia expansion strategy", ViTrox also aims to strengthen the group's presence in North America and South America through its direct sales force and strategic sales channel partners.
"We aim to expand our global market share in machine vision solution, especially for automated board inspection (ABI) and machine vision system (MVS) serving the back-end semiconductor assembly and packaging industry as well as the electronics manufacturing and contract manufacturing industry," ViTrox CEO and managing director Chu Jenn Weng (pix) told SunBiz in an email interview.
For the financial year ended Dec 31, 2013 (FY13), ViTrox saw its revenue grow by 19.4% to RM106.1 million, up from RM88.87 million a year ago.
Despite hitting the RM100 million mark, ViTrox is way off the mark to achieving the main goal of its '555 strategy', a revenue size of RM500 million by the end of next year, with just one and a half years left to go.
However, Chu, who is also the co-founder and president of ViTrox, refuses to wave the white flag just yet.
"555 is a stretch target but we have no intention to revise the strategy cum target. We are confident that we will achieve the target not very far from now. It is just a matter of time," he said.
ViTrox, being the country's largest solution provider of automated vision inspection systems and equipment, has three major business segments. The ABI contributed some 60% of the group's revenue, the MVS accounted for about 35%, while the electronics communication system (ECS) made up the remaining 5%.
The composition ratio of revenue contribution, Chu said, will be status quo for the next three years.
Generally, the group's products are used by companies in the semiconductor, automotive, telecommunication and electronic packaging industries to detect defects that occur during the manufacturing process.
Chu said the group will invest RM15 million to RM20 million in research & development (R&D), as there are many new machine vision potential applications for the non-manufacturing sector in the foreseeable future.
"We are exploring some of the potential now but it will not give any material impact to our existing business," he said.
On top of that, ViTrox has allocated capital expenditure of RM2million to RM3 million for this year.
"We will stay focused on our market expansion plan and R&D initiative to make ViTrox the best in class solution provider in the market we served," said Chu.
As of March 31, 2014, ViTrox's cash and equivalent stood at about RM55 million, and Chu sees no immediate need for the group to raise fresh capital from public investors.
On another note, Chu said he is very optimistic about the business outlook in 2014, in view of the global recovery in the semiconductor and electronics markets, as well as the group's strategy in growing the customer base globally.
"I believe ViTrox can achieve strong double-digit growth in revenue this year, but I cannot disclose the exact percentage to you at this moment," he said.
Currently, ViTrox Innovation Centre had been fully operational where 80% of the floor space has been utilized to cater for the business expansion.
ViTrox is also setting up the Centre of Excellence for Machine Vision where the group aims to collaborate with small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and technopreneurs in the region to create an eco-system for machine vision technology to serve the lucrative machine vision market worldwide.