Nanya Technology Corp (南亞科技), the nation’s top PC DRAM chipmaker, yesterday said revenue decreased 17 percent month-on-month last month to NT$2.01 billion (US$66.35 million), hitting its lowest level in about three years.
In November, Nanya Technology reported NT$2.42 billion in revenue. On an annual basis, sales plunged 50 percent last month from NT$4.05 billion in December 2010.
The company blamed the revenue contraction on a 20 percent reduction in shipments, company spokesman Pai Pei-lin (白培霖) said in a telephone interview.
However, the average selling price rebounded slightly from November, Pai said.
“Demand was not bad in the second half of December compared with October and November. A recovery in the supply of hard disc drives also helped,” he said.
Floods in Thailand that began in July severely damaged factories of several of the world’s major hard disc drive companies, which delayed PC shipments and hurt demand for memory chips.
“December should be the trough. I think there is only a slim possibility of a price decline in January,” Pai said, adding that chip prices on the daily-trading market were on the rise, which would create better odds of a price rise for Nanya Technology.
The benchmark PC DRAM price has soared 31 percent from its lowest point over the past two months, boosted by a large production cut by major DRAM chipmakers, including Nanya Technology and Japanese memory chipmaker Elpida Memory Inc, according to Taipei-based market researcher TrendForce Corp (集邦科技).
For the whole year of last year, Nanya Technology’s revenue fell 35 percent to NT$36.74 billion, from NT$56.54 billion in 2010.
In a separate statement, Inotera Memories Inc (華亞科技), a PC DRAM joint venture between Nanya Technology and US memory chipmaker Micron Technology Inc, said revenues slid 3.1 percent to NT$2.81 billion last month, from November’s NT$2.9 billion.
That represented a contraction of about 10 percent from NT$3.12 billion in December 2010. Overall, Inotera’s revenues dropped by 9.79 percent to NT$37.39 billion last year, compared with NT$41.45 billion in 2010.
Rexchip Electronics Corp (瑞晶電子), a local PC DRAM subsidiary of Elpida, yesterday said its revenues dropped 19.19 percent to NT$1.7 billion from NT$2.11 billion a year ago, according to a filing with the Taiwan Stock Exchange.
That brought the chipmaker’s total revenue last year to NT$29.33 billion, down 38.65 percent from NT$47.82 billion in 2010.
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