Winbond Electronics Corp (華邦電子), Taiwan's most unprofitable computer-memory chipmaker, will spin off its non-memory business on July 1, after an oversupply drove prices to a record low last year.
Winbond will separate the profitable non-memory business into a wholly owned company, Wilson Wen (
"We're spinning off the operations so the profit from the logic business won't be diluted by losses in the memory division," Wen said.
Winbond reported a loss of NT$5.8 billion (US$189 million) last year, shifting from a profit in 2006, after a glut dragged down the price of memory chips by 85 percent.
The company had a net loss margin of 18.1 percent last year, the worst among Taiwan's five biggest memory chipmakers.
About 35 percent of Winbond's sales come from non-memory chips, used in electronics and computer peripherals including keyboards, Wen said.
The business will have about NT$2.5 billion in capital and be based in Hsinchu, chief financial officer James Wen (溫堅), who is not related to company spokesman Wen, said at briefing in Taipei yesterday.
The company, which will be named Nuvoton Technology Corp (新唐科技), will retain the unprofitable division that makes memory chips used in computers and move its headquarters to Taichung, where it operates a factory that makes memory semiconductors from 12-inch wafers, he said.
Winbond dropped 2.2 percent to NT$8.50 on the Taiwan Stock Exchange, compared with a 0.6 percent decline for the TAIEX.
Winbond's spin-off announcement came after Silicon Integrated Systems Corp (SIS, 矽統) said on Thursday that it planned to spin off three business units in September, as part of its plan to turn a profit.
SIS will set up three wholly owned companies after separating its investment, television and handheld chip businesses on Sept. 1, the Hsinchu-based chipmaker said in a filing to the stock exchange. The company plans to focus on selling PC chipsets.
Shares of SIS lost 1 percent to NT$10.10 yesterday.
DECOUPLING? In a sign of deeper US-China technology decoupling, Apple has held initial talks about using Baidu’s generative AI technology in its iPhones, the Wall Street Journal said China has introduced guidelines to phase out US microprocessors from Intel Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) from government PCs and servers, the Financial Times reported yesterday. The procurement guidance also seeks to sideline Microsoft Corp’s Windows operating system and foreign-made database software in favor of domestic options, the report said. Chinese officials have begun following the guidelines, which were unveiled in December last year, the report said. They order government agencies above the township level to include criteria requiring “safe and reliable” processors and operating systems when making purchases, the newspaper said. The US has been aiming to boost domestic semiconductor
Nvidia Corp earned its US$2.2 trillion market cap by producing artificial intelligence (AI) chips that have become the lifeblood powering the new era of generative AI developers from start-ups to Microsoft Corp, OpenAI and Google parent Alphabet Inc. Almost as important to its hardware is the company’s nearly 20 years’ worth of computer code, which helps make competition with the company nearly impossible. More than 4 million global developers rely on Nvidia’s CUDA software platform to build AI and other apps. Now a coalition of tech companies that includes Qualcomm Inc, Google and Intel Corp plans to loosen Nvidia’s chokehold by going
ENERGY IMPACT: The electricity rate hike is expected to add about NT$4 billion to TSMC’s electricity bill a year and cut its annual earnings per share by about NT$0.154 Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has left its long-term gross margin target unchanged despite the government deciding on Friday to raise electricity rates. One of the heaviest power consuming manufacturers in Taiwan, TSMC said it always respects the government’s energy policy and would continue to operate its fabs by making efforts in energy conservation. The chipmaker said it has left a long-term goal of more than 53 percent in gross margin unchanged. The Ministry of Economic Affairs concluded a power rate evaluation meeting on Friday, announcing electricity tariffs would go up by 11 percent on average to about NT$3.4518 per kilowatt-hour (kWh)
OPENING ADDRESS: The CEO is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing and artificial intelligence at the trade show’s opening on June 3, TAITRA said Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) chairperson and chief executive officer Lisa Su (蘇姿丰) is to deliver the opening keynote speech at Computex Taipei this year, the event’s organizer said in a statement yesterday. Su is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing (HPC) in the artificial intelligence (AI) era to open Computex, one of the world’s largest computer and technology trade events, at 9:30am on June 3, the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) said. Su is to explore how AMD and the company’s strategic technology partners are pushing the limits of AI and HPC, from data centers to