Nanya Technology Corp (南亞科技) yesterday posted its best monthly revenue in four months for last month, helping the DRAM chipmaker eke out some sequential growth last quarter.
Revenue expanded 5.56 percent to NT$3.56 billion (US$105.79 million) last month, compared with NT$3.37 billion in November last year, a company statement said.
On an annual basis, revenue shrank 14.42 percent as weaker-than-expected PC demand amid slowing economic growth in emerging nations has caused a supply glut, which weighed on chip prices.
In the quarter ending Dec. 31 last year, revenue stood at NT$10.347 billion, up slightly from NT$10.337 billion in the third quarter, ending three quarters of decline.
Last quarter’s revenue beat Morgan Stanley’s forecast of NT$9.35 billion. Morgan Stanley upgraded Nanya Technology to an “overweight” rating last month on expectations that the chipmaker would benefit from potential disposal gain of NT$23 billion from selling its stake of Inotera Memories Inc (華亞科技) to Micron Technology Inc.
Micron Technology offered to buy a 67 percent stake in Inotera at NT$30 per share from its investors. Nanya Technology and its parent company Formosa Group (台塑集團) hold about a 32 percent stake in Inotera.
Nanya Technology in October last year said that it expects seasonal demand and stabilizing DRAM chip prices to help hold gross margin steady at 37.3 percent, which it recorded in the third quarter of last year.
The company expects shipments to grow by a single digit last quarter from the previous quarter through converting more wafers to cost-efficient 30-nanometer (nm) design shrink technology.
Last year as a whole, revenue contracted 10.67 percent to NT$43.87 billion from NT$49.11 billion in 2014.
Nanya Technology’s latest fundraising program made further progress yesterday as Mercuries Life Insurance Co Ltd (三商美邦人壽) said it has subscribed to 13.85 million new common shares of Nanya Technology for NT$505 million.
The memory chipmaker plans to raise NT$11.68 billion by issuing 320 million shares at NT$36.5 each to help fund its technology migration to next-generation 20nm technology.
Kingston Technology Co of the US, the world’s largest independent memory module maker, yesterday subscribed to 82.19 million common shares of Nanya Technology for nearly NT$3 billion.
Kingston would hold about a 3 percent stake in Nanya after the transaction.
Meanwhile, another memory module maker, ADATA Technology Co (威剛), subscribed to 24.8 million shares for about NT$905 million.
Kingston and ADATA are both clients of Nanya Technology.
In a separate statement, Inotera, a 33-percent owned DRAM manufacturing arm of Micron Technology Inc, yesterday said revenue last month jumped 8.4 percent sequentially to an estimated NT$3.8 billion, compared with NT$3.508 billion in November last year.
That represented an annual decline of 45 percent from NT$6.92 billion.
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