Nanya Technology Corp (南亞科技), the nation’s biggest DRAM maker, yesterday said quarterly losses narrowed to NT$9.03 billion (US$311 million) last quarter as prices declined less drastically than feared.
The chipmaker posted losses of NT$10.15 billion in the fourth quarter of last year and NT$1.63 billion in the first quarter of last year.
As supply and demand were reaching parity, prices would -rebound by a double-digit percentage at a quarterly pace this quarter and next quarter after plunging 23 percent quarter-on-quarter in the first three months of this year and 38 percent in the fourth quarter of last year, the chipmaker said.
“Customers this year started building inventories a few weeks earlier than they did in the past to prepare for the seasonal demand in the second half,” company spokesman Pai Pei-lin (白培霖) told a media briefing.
“One of our major customers even offered to buy chips at a higher price than our price quote for April,” Pai said. “Growing signs indicate that they [PC makers] are concerned about supply constraints in the second half, especially companies focusing on selling PCs to corporations.”
Nanya Technology, which counts Dell Inc and Hewlett--Packard Co as its major customers, hiked prices by between 5 percent and 10 percent after its monthly negotiations with clients.
After five straight quarters of losses, Pai said, the company hoped it would soon break even in terms of monthly results.
This quarter, output is expected to grow by between 25 percent and 35 percent quarter-on--quarter, helped by improving yield and growing technological migration to 42-nanometer technology, Pai said.
That also showed that there would be a very limited impact on the company’s manufacturing from the March 11 quake and tsunami in Japan because Nanya Technology primarily purchases key raw material silicone wafers from local supplier Formosa Sumco Technology Corp (台勝科) rather than from quake-hit Shin-Etsu Chemical Co.
Revenues shrank 9 percent -quarter-on-quarter, while -shipments expanded 20 percent last quarter from the previous quarter, the company said.
To fund the technological migration, Nanya planned to propose a new share sale of up to 700 million shares during the annual general shareholders’ meeting on June 14.
Inotera Memories Inc (華亞科), a DRAM venture between Nanya Technology and US memory giant Micron Technology Inc, yesterday also posted smaller quarterly losses of NT$4.04 billion during the January-to-March period, from NT$4.67 billion in the previous quarter.
Inotera lost NT$1.56 billion in the first quarter of last year.
Separately, Powerchip Technology Corp (力晶半導體), the nation’s No. 2 DRAM maker, yesterday said quarterly losses shrank to NT$4.97 billion after prices hit bottom, from a loss of NT$8.33 billion in the final quarter of last year.
Powerchip’s first-quarter loss did not include figures from Rexchip Electronics Corp (瑞晶電子), a DRAM joint venture between Powerchip and Japan’s Elpida Memory Inc.
Powerchip spokesman Eric Tang (譚仲民) said the company would enhance its competitiveness this quarter after adding mainstream 2GB DDR3 DRAM chips to its product lineup.
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