Asetek halts revenue guidance as large customers cancel orders

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Asetek expects revenues to drop drastically.

Asetek
(Image credit: Asetek)

Asetek was one of the pioneers of closed-loop liquid cooling systems in the early 2000s and patented many technologies covering all-in-one liquid coolers. This put Asetek in a unique position to sue competitors for patent infringements or make them its customers and produce LCSs for them. However, as suppliers of closed-loop liquid coolers find ways to overcome Asetek's patents to circumvent some of the company's patents while the other expires, they lower their orders to the Danish liquid cooling giant.

"Asetek A/S has received updated purchase forecasts from a number of the company's largest OEM customers," a statement issued this week reads. "Based on these new forecasts, the expected increase in demand in the second half of 2024 of the company's liquid cooling products may not materialize. This will result in a significant decline in Group revenue and profitability for 2024 compared to the revenue and profitability guidance issued on March 8, 2024."

Indeed, some of the popular LCS makers we spoke to at Computex earlier this month emphasized that Asetek does not make some of their latest products or use any of Asetek's patents. As a result, the Danish company will not get any licensing fees or manufacturing orders in the coming months.

As one of the world's largest makers of liquid cooling systems, Asetek has dozens of clients, including PC OEMs, cooling system suppliers, and even data center developers. For obvious reasons, Asetek does not disclose the names of its customers who have cancelled their orders or what kind of products it ships to them.

While Asetek's traditional PC customers can indeed produce their liquid coolers themselves, they are hardly driving revenue growth for the company, unlike data center clients, who are increasingly buying liquid coolers. Unfortunately, we have no idea which of Asetek's clients abruptly cut their orders to the liquid cooling giant.

"The management team and board of directors of Asetek will consider the long- and short-term consequences of the weakened and uncertain market situation," a statement by the company reads. "The assessment today is that the negative trend in revenue may continue into 2025. Based on this, a plan containing initiatives to navigate the short and long-term challenges will be developed and then communicated as soon as possible."

Anton Shilov
Anton Shilov
Contributing Writer

Anton Shilov is a contributing writer at Tom’s Hardware. Over the past couple of decades, he has covered everything from CPUs and GPUs to supercomputers and from modern process technologies and latest fab tools to high-tech industry trends.

5 Comments Comment from the forums
  • thestryker
    This is what happens when you're so litigious that you become known widely for just that. They didn't start improving their products until companies started moving away from them and they had their primary patent invalidated outside the US.

    CoolIT is the name I keep seeing with regards to enterprise level cooling (they're in all the modern Cray systems). So I'd assume that's their big competitor in this field and I can't imagine it's easy to gain ground here without offering a much superior product.
    Reply
  • tcg101
    thestryker said:
    This is what happens when you're so litigious that you become known widely for just that. They didn't start improving their products until companies started moving away from them and they had their primary patent invalidated outside the US.

    CoolIT is the name I keep seeing with regards to enterprise level cooling (they're in all the modern Cray systems). So I'd assume that's their big competitor in this field and I can't imagine it's easy to gain ground here without offering a much superior product.
    Or comparable, but priced lower.
    Reply
  • watzupken
    Asetek had a first mover advantage, which I feel they have squandered off making small changes to their main product gen on gen, and mainly focusing on making sure they have no competition through litigation. With only 1 key product, it is a matter of time before competitors become good enough to put the firm into financial trouble.
    Reply
  • Allen_B
    What amazes me is that they knew what was coming and had time to improve. Guess they chose not to. I wonder if they’ve been plundered by senior management who won’t care what happens later as long as they’re well taken care of.
    Reply
  • TechLurker
    thestryker said:
    CoolIT is the name I keep seeing with regards to enterprise level cooling (they're in all the modern Cray systems). So I'd assume that's their big competitor in this field and I can't imagine it's easy to gain ground here without offering a much superior product.
    Alphacool also got into the enterprise cooling market pretty early on, and thrived off providing custom solutions before they began providing expandable AIOs as design standardization set in. And they also were one of the first to wedge themselves into Asetek's consumer space with expandable AIOs too, even if they never were OEM for other AIO sellers.

    But I do miss CoolIT in the consumer space; their old AIOs for Corsair were superior to the later Asetek versions, and their novel AIO with a TEC unit helped keep an AM3 Bulldozer cool enough.
    Reply