Nanya Technology Corp (南亞科技), the nation’s biggest PC DRAM maker, yesterday said it had trimmed chip production by between 10 percent and 20 percent since September from its full capacity of 120,000 wafers a month in a move to shore up prices.
Nanya said it would continue to adjust factory utilization to cope with market demand through weekly reviews.
“The price will remain weak because inventories are still two weeks higher than the normal levels,” Nanya spokesman Pai Pei-lin (白培霖) said by the telephone.
Floods in Thailand have aggravated the lengthy oversupply since demand could decrease further because shipments of some PC companies were stalled after the supply of hard disk drives became constrained, Pai said.
Commenting on the price trend, Pai said DRAM prices would seesaw over a narrow range this month and next month because prices have fallen to approach the cost level of most companies.
A free-fall in chip prices has driven Nanya Technology into deep losses totaling NT$28.89 billion (US$956 million) in the first nine months of this year.
To improve the company’s financial structure and to replenish its operating capital, the firm yesterday received the approval from its shareholders to raise funds by issuing 15 billion new common shares at a price of NT$2.77 a share via private placement. Parent company Formosa Plastics Group (台塑集團) is likely to subscribe to Nanya shares as it did before.
Shares in Nanya Technology tumbled 6.37 percent to NT$2.5, while Powerchip Technology Corp (力晶科技) shares rallied for the seventh day of trading to NT$1.49 as it was gradually shifting away from the volatitle DRAM industry.
Minister of Economic Affairs Shih Yen-shiang (施顏祥) said the government had taken steps to assist DRAM firms, which have been battered by a down cycle and plummeting prices. However, Shih did not elaborate on the government’s response to Powerchip’s reported application to roll over its debt for one more year.
"The Industrial Development Bureau is handling the matter," he said.
In the first nine months of this year, Powerchip posted a net loss of NT$13.26 billion, compared with NT$12.21 billion in net profit a year earlier.
With its syndicated loans scheduled to mature in the middle of next month, Powerchip hopes that its creditor banks, mostly government-invested, will roll over the loans for one more year.
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