Nanya posts strong Q1 earnings

Nanya Technology Corp (南亞科技), the nation's second-biggest maker of computer memory chips, yesterday posted better-than-expected quarterly earnings as increased sales in high-margin chips offset price erosion.

That trend will extend into the second quarter, the company said.

"At this point, we feel demand in the second quarter will not weaken [as fast] as we thought," Nanya vice president Pai Pei-lin (白培霖) said.

"Our production still can't meet customer demand ... We are trying to raise chip prices," Pai said, adding that supply was tight in better-margin products.

In the first quarter of the year, Nanya more than doubled its net income to NT$2.04 billion (US$62.8 million) from NT$992 million a year ago, according to the company's statement. Earnings per share rose to NT$0.54 from NT$0.28 in the same period, it showed.

Gross margins also improved to 24 percent from 16 percent during the same period.

The quarterly results beat the expectations of most analysts. Grand Cathay Securities Co (大華證券) forecast that quarterly earnings would be about NT$1.2 billion.

Non-operating income expanded 6 percent year-on-year to NT$985 million, largely due to a 50-50 memory chip manufacturing joint venture with Infineon Technologies AG, Inotera Memories Inc (華亞科技), according to the statement.

Inotera Memories said yesterday that net income jumped 51 percent to NT$2.67 billion, or NT$1.05 per share, compared with NT$1.7 billion, or NT$0.7 a share, a year ago.

The price of memory chips, however, plunged about 33 percent on average in the first quarter from a year earlier, according to Nanya's statistics.

"We have a better product mix and constant cost-reduction efforts," Pai said.

Nanya, which supplies memory chips to computer vendors such as Dell Inc, sold more DDR2 (second-generation double data rate) chips and more old DDR chips with high density last quarter, Pai said.

DDR2 chips accounted for 55 percent of Nanya's total sales last quarter, up from 10 percent a year earlier, he said. The percentage will rise to between 65 percent and 70 percent this quarter, he added.

Benchmark DDR2 chips were priced at US$4.92 per unit, compared with US$4.51 for DDR chips with bigger memory space and US$2.28 for DDR chips with smaller memory storage yesterday, according to Taipei-based market researcher DRAMeXchange.

Nanya's revenues jumped 37 percent in the January-March quarter compared to the same period last year, to NT$14.87 billion, the company said earlier.

"Nanya had a good performance [in the first quarter]," said Crystal Lee (李懿薇), an analyst with ABN AMRO Asia Ltd in Taipei.

Lee said ABN AMRO holds a positive view about the memory sector.

"We expect supply constraints in the second half on lower-than-expected capacity ... though we don't expect demand to grow strongly," Lee said.

Lee's view echoed Nanya's comments.

"This year will be a good year [for memory chipmakers]," Pai said.