Macronix International Co Ltd (旺宏電子), which supplies memory chips to Japanese video game console maker Nintendo Co, yesterday reported its first quarterly loss in six years as prices fell at a steeper-than-expected pace amid sluggish demand.
The slower-than-expected production ramp-up at its new 12-inch factory added pressure to already weak gross margins last quarter because of higher manufacturing expenses, Macronix said, adding that it had underestimated the difficulty in integrating equipment.
Macronix recorded a loss of NT$1.09 billion (US$37 million) in the first quarter, reversing net profits of NT$1.06 billion in the same period last year and NT$981 million in the fourth quarter of last year, according to company statements.
The last time the chipmaker fell into the red was in the first quarter of 2006, when it recorded a loss of NT$627 million.
First-quarter gross margin shrank to 14 percent, the lowest level since the first quarter of 2006, compared with 42 percent in the previous year and 37 percent in the final quarter of last year.
“We think the first quarter will be our worst quarter this year based on current bookings,” Macronix chairman and chief executive officer Miin Wu (吳敏求) told a media briefing.
“The business will improve gradually over the rest of the year, and we think there’s a chance for Macronix to eke out a quarterly profit [later this year],” Wu said.
Wu said the company’s gross margin should recover to about 40 percent within the next two years, or two-and-a-half years after the new fab started producing memory chips using advanced 32-nanometer process technology.
This quarter, prices for NOR flash memory chips are expected to stabilize, helped by recovering demand, after plunging 30 percent quarter-on-quarter — far sharper than the company’s forecast of a 10 percent drop — in the first three months, Wu said.
NOR flash chips, which are used to store configuration data in a wide range of digital products, accounted for about 60 percent, of Macronix’s revenue of NT$5.1 billion last quarter, up from 44 percent a quarter ago, as demand for another type of memory, ROM, plummeted.
Macronix, which shipped most of its ROM chips to Nintendo, does not expect its ROM business to improve significantly this quarter because of seasonal factors.
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],”
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
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained