Nanya Technology Corp (南亞科技), one of Formosa Plastics Group’s memory-chip manufacturing arms, said on Saturday that it has ended a 12-quarter losing streak by turning a profit in the first quarter of the year.
Nanya said the improvement in its bottom line was the result of a rebound in prices of DRAM chips as the market has become more balanced between demand and supply.
In the first quarter, Nanya Technology, the largest DRAM maker in Taiwan, posted NT$506 million (US$16.96 million) in net profit or about NT$0.02 in earnings per share on an unaudited basis.
The first quarter figure marked a rebound from the NT$8.88 billion net loss, or NT$0.45 in losses per share, recorded in the fourth quarter of last year.
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The first quarter profit also marked the highest quarterly earnings in six years.
Last month alone, Nanya Technology posted NT$3.9 billion in net profit, or NT$0.16 in earnings per share, on the back of a significant recovery in DRAM prices.
Last month’s profit helped the company offset losses incurred in the previous two months to post a net profit for the entire first quarter.
The global DRAM business had suffered a steep drop in product prices in recent years. However, in the past few months, conditions have started to improve largely because major suppliers have cut production to lower supply.
The average contract price of the benchmark DDR3 4GB DRAM chip in the first half of this month rose by more than 8 percent from the second half of last month to US$25.5, according to Taiwan-based market information advisory firm TrendForce.
Nanya Technology has scheduled an investors’ conference for tomorrow to announce details about its first-quarter operations.
A guidance for the second quarter is also expected in the meeting.
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In the fourth quarter of last year, Nanya Technology ranked as the fifth largest DRAM supplier in the world, having sold US$241 million of products and taken a 3.5 percent market share, according to DRAMeXchange, a research unit of TrendForce.
South Korea’s Samsung Electronics Co was the largest DRAM supplier, with a 42 percent market share, while SK Hynix Semiconductor Inc of South Korea had 25 percent, Japan’s Elpida Memory Inc 14.1 percent and US-based Micron Technology Corp 10.5 percent.
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