Several semiconductor companies yesterday reported higher revenues for last month than the same month of last year, thanks to growing demand for chips used in mobile devices, such as smartphones and tablets.
However, some of them saw revenues for last month decline from December last year, as the semiconductor industry enters the low season with their customers adjusting inventory.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s top foundry, reported that its consolidated sales rose 8.4 percent year-on-year and 3.5 percent month-on-month to NT$51.43 billion (US$1.69 billion) last month.
United Microelectronics Corp (UMC, 聯電), the world’s second-largest wafer foundry, said revenue increased 6.46 percent to NT$10.06 billion from the same month last year.
Last month’s figure was 1.58 percent higher than the December level, the company’s data showed.
The two Hsinchu-based companies did not elaborate on the latest revenue figures yesterday.
TSMC on Jan. 16 offered a conservative guidance for its revenue this quarter, forecasting sales would contract by between 5.36 percent and 6.7 percent sequentially to between NT$136 billion and NT$138 billion, as companies in the supply chain continue to digest their surplus inventories, which would lead to lower orders for the firm.
On Jan. 24, UMC also said its sales for the current quarter would shrink from last quarter, as the average selling prices for its products would drop by about 4 percent and its capacity utilization could fall to between 76 percent and 79 percent, affected by seasonal factors.
Advanced Semiconductor Engineering Inc (ASE, 日月光半導體), the world’s biggest chip packager and tester, said in a filing to the stock exchange yesterday that its revenue reached NT$18.59 billion last month, an 11.9 percent increase from the year-earlier level, but a 13.2 percent decline from the previous month.
The Greater Kaohsiung-based company last week provided investors with a weaker-than-expected sales guidance for this quarter, a reflection of negative impacts from Apple Inc’s inventory correction and the slowdown in high-end smartphone demand, although analysts remain positive about the company’s outlook throughout this year.
“We remain bullish on its 2014 outlook,” Deutsche Bank analyst Michael Chou (周立中) said in a report on Friday, citing ASE’s strong system-in-packaging demand from mobile and wearable devices in the second half of the year, as well as the additional orders the firm gained from Apple, Micron Technology Inc, Toshiba Corp and MediaTek Inc (聯發科).
Siliconware Precision Industry Co (SPIL, 矽品精密), ASE’s domestic rival, also released its revenue figures for last month yesterday, showing an increase of 30.92 percent year-on-year, but a slight setback of 1.07 percent month-on-month to NT$6.02 billion.
The Hsinchu-based SPIL has recently benefited from orders transferred from MediaTek, Qualcomm Inc, Broadcom Corp and other companies because of ASE’s partial shutdown at its K7 plant over environmental concerns.
On Jan. 27, the company said falling factory utilization could impact its sales for the current quarter, although the company could still perform better than seasonal patterns on the back of a better-than-expected PC market outlook.
Under SPIL’s guidance, sales for the three months ending March 31 would likely shrink by between 4 percent and 8 percent quarter-on-quarter to within a range of between NT$17.33 billion and NT$18.09 billion.
Handset chip designer MediaTek yesterday said its consolidated revenue reached NT$12.84 billion last month, up 51.95 percent from a year earlier, reflecting the impact from stronger handset market growth in China and the company’s efforts to expand into the tablet market.
And while last month’s sales figure was down 1.87 percent from December, the monthly decline was in line with the seasonal pattern, with vendors building inventories ahead of the Lunar New Year holiday in China, analysts said.
However, Powertech Technology Inc (力成科技), the nation’s biggest computer memorychip packager, saw its revenue for last month decline both annually and monthly.
The company yesterday posted sales of NT$3.08 billion last month, down 2.89 percent from the year-earlier level and 2.85 percent from December.
Chou said in a separate note that he expected more headwinds for Powertech this year, as the firm’s key customers would continue to shift orders to its rivals such as ASE and ChipMos Technologies Ltd (南茂科技).
Additional reporting by Lisa Wang and Helen Ku
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
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
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],”
MAJOR BENEFICIARY: The company benefits from TSMC’s advanced packaging scarcity, given robust demand for Nvidia AI chips, analysts said ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it is raising its equipment capital expenditure budget by 10 percent this year to expand leading-edge and advanced packing and testing capacity amid strong artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing chip demand. This is on top of the 40 to 50 percent annual increase in its capital spending budget to more than the US$1.7 billion to announced in February. About half of the equipment capital expenditure would be spent on leading-edge and advanced packaging and testing technology, the company said. ASE is considered by analysts