Powerchip Semiconductor Corp (力晶半導體), the nation’s No. 2 computer memory chipmaker, yesterday said it posted a profit for the second consecutive quarter, with sales last month rising to their highest in three years on the back of stronger chip prices.
Last month, Powerchip made NT$6.85 billion (US$215.5 million) in sales, up 24 percent from NT$5.52 billion in February, marking the highest level since it made NT$8.02 billion in March 2007.
Rising chip prices driven by strong demand for commodity DRAM on the spot market, increased capacity and better yields helped push the company’s revenue and profit last month, company spokesman Eric Tang (譚仲民) said.
The last quarter “marked a second profitable quarter in a row for Powerchip,” Tang said by telephone.
He declined to disclose specific figures.
“We are optimistic about chip prices [in the short term] as demand looks sustainable,” Tang said.
First-quarter revenue reached NT$18.29 billion, more than quadrupling from NT$3.92 billion in the same period last year.
To cope with recovering demand and boost profits, the chipmaker is in talks with equipment makers to buy new machines for its migration to 45-nanometer process technology, he said.
Tang said the company had not set a timetable for the technology upgrade because of a short supply of semiconductor equipment.
The technological migration is critical to raising profitability as it could lower costs for making new-generation DDR3 chips by about 30 percent, he said.
Nanya Technology Corp (南亞科技), the nation’s biggest DRAM maker, is set to release last month’s sales figure next week.
The US dollar was trading at NT$29.7 at 10am today on the Taipei Foreign Exchange, as the New Taiwan dollar gained NT$1.364 from the previous close last week. The NT dollar continued to rise today, after surging 3.07 percent on Friday. After opening at NT$30.91, the NT dollar gained more than NT$1 in just 15 minutes, briefly passing the NT$30 mark. Before the US Department of the Treasury's semi-annual currency report came out, expectations that the NT dollar would keep rising were already building. The NT dollar on Friday closed at NT$31.064, up by NT$0.953 — a 3.07 percent single-day gain. Today,
‘SHORT TERM’: The local currency would likely remain strong in the near term, driven by anticipated US trade pressure, capital inflows and expectations of a US Fed rate cut The US dollar is expected to fall below NT$30 in the near term, as traders anticipate increased pressure from Washington for Taiwan to allow the New Taiwan dollar to appreciate, Cathay United Bank (國泰世華銀行) chief economist Lin Chi-chao (林啟超) said. Following a sharp drop in the greenback against the NT dollar on Friday, Lin told the Central News Agency that the local currency is likely to remain strong in the short term, driven in part by market psychology surrounding anticipated US policy pressure. On Friday, the US dollar fell NT$0.953, or 3.07 percent, closing at NT$31.064 — its lowest level since Jan.
Hong Kong authorities ramped up sales of the local dollar as the greenback’s slide threatened the foreign-exchange peg. The Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) sold a record HK$60.5 billion (US$7.8 billion) of the city’s currency, according to an alert sent on its Bloomberg page yesterday in Asia, after it tested the upper end of its trading band. That added to the HK$56.1 billion of sales versus the greenback since Friday. The rapid intervention signals efforts from the city’s authorities to limit the local currency’s moves within its HK$7.75 to HK$7.85 per US dollar trading band. Heavy sales of the local dollar by
The Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) yesterday met with some of the nation’s largest insurance companies as a skyrocketing New Taiwan dollar piles pressure on their hundreds of billions of dollars in US bond investments. The commission has asked some life insurance firms, among the biggest Asian holders of US debt, to discuss how the rapidly strengthening NT dollar has impacted their operations, people familiar with the matter said. The meeting took place as the NT dollar jumped as much as 5 percent yesterday, its biggest intraday gain in more than three decades. The local currency surged as exporters rushed to
RSS