Macronix International Co Ltd (旺宏電子), which supplies memory chips to Japanese game console maker Nintendo Co, yesterday said net profits plunged 87 percent year-on-year in the last quarter after factory utilization fell to lower than the chipmaker’s previous estimate because of an unstable ramp at a new factory.
Factory utilization fell to 79 percent in the third quarter, missing the chipmaker’s target of 90 percent. That also brought down the operating profit margin to 7 percent, lower than the company’s forecast of between 8 percent and 12 percent.
CONTRACTED
Net income in the third quarter contracted to NT$359 million (US$11.94 million), down from NT$2.76 billion a year ago. On a quarterly basis, net profits decreased 30 percent from NT$515 million.
This quarter, revenues are expected to grow about 20 percent to between NT$7.8 billion and NT$8 billion from NT$6.5 billion, Macronix forecast.
“After six months in the doldrums in the game console market, we are now seeing encouraging signs,” Macronix chairman Miin Wu (吳敏求) said during a teleconference.
ROM CHIPS
“Shipments of ROM chips will grow significantly this quarter from the third quarter,” he said.
ROM chips, used in game consoles, made up 90 percent of Macronix’s revenues last quarter.
However, flash memory chips would be flat this quarter, Wu said. NOR flash chips are non-volatile computer storage chips used in laptop computers, digital cameras and mobile phones.
RECOVER
Factory usage is expected to recover to 85 percent in the final quarter of the year, after a new 12-inch plant went back to its original schedule, the chipmaker said.
Operating profit margin is expected to improve to between 10 percent and 12 percent and gross margin should be flat or increase to 33 percent from 31 percent last quarter, the firm said.
Macronix’s new plant now produces 17,000 12-inch wafers a month, up from 10,000 wafers in the first half of this year.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day