Nanya Technology Corp (南亞科技), the nation’s biggest DRAM chipmaker, yesterday reported its revenue last month was its weakest in 28 months due to lower shipments on slack PC demand.
Revenue fell by 9.3 percent to NT$3.44 billion (US$110.2 million) last month from NT$3.8 billion in May, as shipments sank 9 percent. In the second quarter, revenue contracted by 7.32 percent to NT$11.15 billion from NT$12.03 billion in the first quarter.
“Last month’s decline was because of reduced shipments. PC DRAM [business] is still under pressure, as last month was a slow period as usual,” Nanya senior vice president Lee Pei-ing (李培瑛) said by telephone.
However, Lee said average prices of the company’s products were stabilizing last month.
PC DRAM chips accounted for about 24 percent of the company’s total revenue in the first quarter. Chip prices might drop by less than 5 percent this quarter from last quarter, Lee said last month.
Prices of mainstream PC DRAM inched 0.46 percent lower on the spot market yesterday to US$2.173 per unit, according to tallies compiled by market researcher TrendForce Corp (集邦科技).
Contract DRAM prices fell by more than 4 percent in the second half of last month from the first half, the tallies showed.
Meanwhile, Inotera Memories Inc (華亞科技), which supplies DRAM chips solely to US-based Micron Technology Inc, yesterday reported a 0.2 percent decline in revenue for last month to NT$5.15 billion from NT$5.16 billion in May. Last month’s figure was the lowest in two years.
Revenue for last quarter also fell by 12.52 percent to NT$16.14 billion from NT$18.45 billion in the previous quarter, the company said in a filing with the Taiwan Stock Exchange.
Inotera is a DRAM manufacturing joint venture between Micron and Nanya Technology.
Sales of PC DRAM units are expected to make up about 35 percent of the company’s total revenue this quarter to hit a record low, the company said.
The US dollar was trading at NT$29.7 at 10am today on the Taipei Foreign Exchange, as the New Taiwan dollar gained NT$1.364 from the previous close last week. The NT dollar continued to rise today, after surging 3.07 percent on Friday. After opening at NT$30.91, the NT dollar gained more than NT$1 in just 15 minutes, briefly passing the NT$30 mark. Before the US Department of the Treasury's semi-annual currency report came out, expectations that the NT dollar would keep rising were already building. The NT dollar on Friday closed at NT$31.064, up by NT$0.953 — a 3.07 percent single-day gain. Today,
‘SHORT TERM’: The local currency would likely remain strong in the near term, driven by anticipated US trade pressure, capital inflows and expectations of a US Fed rate cut The US dollar is expected to fall below NT$30 in the near term, as traders anticipate increased pressure from Washington for Taiwan to allow the New Taiwan dollar to appreciate, Cathay United Bank (國泰世華銀行) chief economist Lin Chi-chao (林啟超) said. Following a sharp drop in the greenback against the NT dollar on Friday, Lin told the Central News Agency that the local currency is likely to remain strong in the short term, driven in part by market psychology surrounding anticipated US policy pressure. On Friday, the US dollar fell NT$0.953, or 3.07 percent, closing at NT$31.064 — its lowest level since Jan.
Hong Kong authorities ramped up sales of the local dollar as the greenback’s slide threatened the foreign-exchange peg. The Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) sold a record HK$60.5 billion (US$7.8 billion) of the city’s currency, according to an alert sent on its Bloomberg page yesterday in Asia, after it tested the upper end of its trading band. That added to the HK$56.1 billion of sales versus the greenback since Friday. The rapid intervention signals efforts from the city’s authorities to limit the local currency’s moves within its HK$7.75 to HK$7.85 per US dollar trading band. Heavy sales of the local dollar by
The Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) yesterday met with some of the nation’s largest insurance companies as a skyrocketing New Taiwan dollar piles pressure on their hundreds of billions of dollars in US bond investments. The commission has asked some life insurance firms, among the biggest Asian holders of US debt, to discuss how the rapidly strengthening NT dollar has impacted their operations, people familiar with the matter said. The meeting took place as the NT dollar jumped as much as 5 percent yesterday, its biggest intraday gain in more than three decades. The local currency surged as exporters rushed to