Welcome, everyone to a new series that we are starting over here at InvestKaki!

At The Helm is a deep-dive into the intangibles of a company (aside from their reports and statistics) by talking to the key people behind the scenes.

The ones that run the day-to-day of the companies, and knows the ins and outs.

To kick-start the series, we talked to Eddie Ng Yew Nam, the current CEO of ASTI Holdings, and ask some burning questions.

ASTI Holdings is listed on the Singapore Exchange and provides tape and reel packaging, tape-making, and integrated circuit programming services to clients in the industrial hardware, consumer electronics, and electric vehicle industries.

In 2022, trading for its shares was suspended as it faced several compliance issues. In 2024, a new board was reconstituted to resolve them. And finally in January 2026, shares resumed trading.

Many things have happened. Let’s check in on Eddie and what’s happening at ASTI.

Eddie: The resumption of trading is a significant milestone for ASTI and the culmination of two years of intensive restructuring. This journey has taught us several important lessons.

Firstly, strong governance and compliance are the foundation of corporate stability.

Before 2022, the company was burdened with overdue audits, unresolved regulatory issues, and a directed delisting. This required us to work towards an exit offer for shareholders.

One thing was clear – no one wanted to engage with us until the company resolved its compliance lapses, restored financial visibility, and stabilised its operations.

Addressing these legacy issues became our first priority.

We cleared the entire audit backlog for FY2022 to FY2024, convened all overdue AGMs, and rebuilt the governance framework from the ground up. These efforts reinstated the company's standing with SGX-RegCo and were essential to restoring trust among regulators, shareholders, and customers.

Secondly, the importance of financial discipline and operational focus.

When the new board and management took over in January 2024, ASTI was facing both regulatory challenges and a downturn in the semiconductor industry. We tightened costs, rationalised loss-making operations, preserved liquidity, and ensured the business continued generating cash despite the headwinds. These measures taught us to run the organisation lean and focused without compromising service quality.

Another key takeaway is the value of transparent and consistent communication. Whether the updates were positive or challenging, we made it a point to engage openly with shareholders, regulators, customers, and advisers. This approach helped rebuild confidence and keep stakeholders aligned throughout the restructuring.

Lastly, the journey reinforced my personal conviction in the intrinsic value of ASTI.

As both a substantial shareholder and a former employee within the group, I knew the business had strong fundamentals once the structural issues were resolved. The successful resumption of trading in January 2026 is therefore not just a regulatory milestone — it reflects the collective effort of the team, the Board, our professional advisers, and the support of SGX-RegCo’s disclosure-based regime.

Overall, these past two years have demonstrated that robust compliance, sound governance, financial discipline, and transparent execution are indispensable to long-term value creation, and they will continue to guide ASTI moving forward.

Eddie: Going into 2026, our strategy remains firmly centred on strengthening and scaling our core semiconductor backend services, particularly tape & reel, IC programming, and inspection.

These are areas where ASTI has long-standing capabilities, and we see sustained demand as the semiconductor recovery gains momentum, especially following the upturn that began in FY2025.

ASTI enters 2026 on a strong footing with a debt-free balance sheet and more than S$22 million in positive working capital. This gives us the flexibility to invest prudently without taking on unnecessary leverage. Going forward, we view that maintaining low bank borrowings, having a conservative gearing, and strong interest coverage as key pillars of our financial discipline. We intend to preserve this strength as the Group expands its capacity and service offerings.

We do not publish formal forward-looking revenue or profit targets but our focus is on sustained top-line revenue growth, progressive margin improvement, and sensible cost scaling as volume increases. The trajectory in 9M25 — where we saw revenue growth, stronger gross margins, and a return to profitability — reflects the direction we intend to continue in 2026.

Ultimately, our goal is to grow sustainably, with sound governance, disciplined capital management, and strategic reinvestment. This approach ensures that ASTI’s expansion is both financially resilient and operationally scalable as the semiconductor cycle continues to strengthen.

Eddie: Our approach to new revenue streams is deliberate and disciplined. We focus on opportunities that strengthen our ecosystem while maintaining a clear link to our core competencies. Every initiative we evaluate must satisfy three key criteria:

First, we prioritise areas that naturally complement our established capabilities in tape & reel, IC programming, and backend handling. This includes expanding into related segments of the semiconductor workflow, such as turnkey logistics, advanced inspection, precision handling solutions, and equipment-related services. These opportunities allow us to diversify revenue while still maintaining our core competencies.

Second, we look at customer-led innovation. Many of the new services we are exploring — for example, inventory logistics support or integrated backend equipment solutions — stem directly from customer demand for more comprehensive, value-added solutions. By deepening our integration into their supply chain, we strengthen long-term relationships and create recurring revenue streams.

Third, we ensure commercial clarity and financial discipline. Any investment must demonstrate clear cash-flow potential and must not overextend our resources. Our R&D spending, supported by the recent placement, is focused on automation, yield improvement, and technologies that enhance throughput and productivity in our existing factories.

We are also evaluating the establishment of a third operating location beyond the Philippines and Scotland. This would enhance resilience, support customers with multi-site requirements, and give ASTI a broader operational footprint in targeted markets.

Overall, our philosophy is to grow horizontally within the semiconductor ecosystem, expanding capacity, broadening value-added services, and selectively entering adjacent activities. This incremental and risk-managed approach ensures sustainable growth while reinforcing ASTI’s position in the global semiconductor backend chain.

Eddie: The most significant phases of cost rationalisation are largely behind us.

Over the past two years, we undertook the necessary but difficult restructuring measures — including workforce optimisation, shutting down loss-making units such as the former DGI operations, and tightening corporate overheads. These actions stabilised our financial position and contributed meaningfully to the turnaround reflected in the 9M25 results.

Going into 2026, our focus is no longer on broad-based cuts but on operational optimisation. Cost discipline remains a core principle, but the strategic emphasis has shifted toward efficiency-driven growth. This includes investments in automation, improved process control, and yield-enhancing technologies — areas supported by the R&D allocation from our recent placement exercise.

As volumes continue to increase with the semiconductor sector’s recovery, we aim to achieve stronger operating leverage, allowing profitability to improve through scale and efficiency rather than additional cuts. The combination of sector tailwinds, capacity expansion, enhanced service offerings, and disciplined cost management positions us to maintain sustainable profitability in the long term.

Eddie: The Philippines provides a highly efficient and cost-competitive foundation for our high-volume backend operations. Its favourable labour cost structure, deep pool of technical talent, and operational scalability make it a natural hub for our core services, as our key customers continue to expand in the region.

Conversely, we have strategically scaled down our activities in China. This decision was driven by the end-of-life cycle of certain customer products, intensifying local competition, and broader macroeconomic factors such as geopolitical tensions and trade disputes. Similarly, our Singapore operations faced challenges associated with lower market demand and higher overhead expenses.

By rationalising these higher-cost centres, we are able to effectively reallocate our resources to regions where the cost-to-output ratio is optimal. Ultimately, this strategic consolidation toward the Philippines directly enhances our operational margins and establishes a more resilient, predictable profit structure for our bottom line.

Eddie: Strengthening corporate governance has been a central pillar of our turnaround strategy and a prerequisite for regaining market confidence. Since the new Board took over in January 2024, we have undertaken a comprehensive governance overhaul aimed at restoring transparency, accountability, and regulatory compliance across the Group.

Key initiatives include:

These efforts were integral to SGX-RegCo approving ASTI’s trading resumption under the disclosure-based regulatory regime. More importantly, they position governance not merely as a compliance obligation, but as a long-term competitive advantage for the company.

Eddie: The Artificial Intelligence (AI) sector has become a primary catalyst for global semiconductor demand, particularly within the realms of data centres, networking hardware, and high-performance computing.

While recent AI and cryptocurrency cycles have triggered a massive surge in demand for GPUs and CPUs, it is important to clarify that ASTI did not immediately benefit from this specific wave. Our primary customer base focuses on providing a broad range of analog, digital, and logic components for industrial hardware, consumer electronics, and EV power—segments that were less directly tied to the boom in data centres and AI agents.

When the new Board assumed leadership in January 2024, the broader semiconductor market was grappling with a significant oversupply following the inventory buildup of the COVID era. This inventory overhang only began to normalise toward the end of 2024, with a genuine recovery in demand in the second quarter of 2025.

Today, ASTI is indirectly plugged into the AI cycle. As the next generation of consumer electronics is manufactured with increasingly sophisticated embedded AI capabilities, the requirement for reliable, high-precision backend processing naturally rises. Consequently, ASTI is now benefiting from this broader, volume-driven upcycle.

Furthermore, we are actively integrating AI-driven advancements into our own operations. We are looking to implement AI-assisted tools within our factories to enhance process capabilities and optimise production yields. Accordingly, our upcoming investments will remain focused on automation, precision handling, and operational efficiency.

Eddie: Investors can expect a year centred on execution, expansion, and rebuilding shareholder value as ASTI moves into a post-restructuring chapter.

The 2026 Objective: Deliver consistent, sustainable performance and execute expansion initiatives to re-establish ASTI as a reliable value creator.

We had a great time interviewing Eddie and ASTI, and if you want to check out more information on ASTI Holdings, head on over to their website here.

Regards
James Yeo