Macronix International Co (旺宏電子), which supplies memory chips for Japanese video game console maker Nintendo Co, yesterday posted a loss of NT$1.66 billion (US$49.2 million) last quarter as gross margin fell to its lowest in six quarters due to low utilization and sagging demand.
Last quarter’s figures brought Macronix’s total losses last year to NT$4.19 billion, an improvement compared with losses of NT$6.45 billion in 2014. The chipmaker lost NT$949 million in the third quarter last year.
In the final quarter last year, gross margin fell to 8 percent, compared with 14 percent the previous quarter after utilization fell from 90 percent to 70 percent.
“By lowering production, we aim to bring down our inventory to a level of NT$5 billion from NT$9 billion,” company president Lu Chih-yuan (盧志遠) said.
After a long term of incurring losses, the company is likely to get out of the woods this year thanks to revenue growth and reducing manufacturing equipment depreciation costs by 67 percent to about NT$2 billion from last year’s NT$6 billion, Lu said.
“We aim to return to profit in the second half of this year,” Lu said. “We are gaining market share this year on the back of improved costs and better technological capabilities, despite not seeing any encouraging signs [of a recovery] in the macroeconomic situation.”
Macronix would eke out a monthly profit when its monthly revenue reaches NT$2 billion, Lu said.
The company expects to become the world’s top NOR Flash memory chip supplier this year, replacing Cypress Semiconductor Corp.
NOR flash memory chips are Macronix’s biggest revenue source, accounting for 62 percent of last year’s revenue of NT$20.93 billion, company data showed.
The automotive and industrial sectors would show the strongest growth for NOR flash chips this year, Lu said.
Macronix counts the world’s top 10 car brands as its customers.
The automotive and industrial sectors made up 19 percent of Macronix’s revenue last quarter and would soon rise to more than 20 percent, Lu said.
Lu said the company’s major client is developing a new platform for its video game device this year, which could provide a boost to the company’s business.
Last year, sluggish sales of video game devices resulted in an annual decline of 45 percent in revenue for the company’s ROM chip, according to company financial statement.
LIMITED IMPACT: Investor confidence was likely sustained by its relatively small exposure to the Chinese market, as only less advanced chips are made in Nanjing Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) saw its stock price close steady yesterday in a sign that the loss of the validated end user (VEU) status for its Nanjing, China, fab should have a mild impact on the world’s biggest contract chipmaker financially and technologically. Media reports about the waiver loss sent TSMC down 1.29 percent during the early trading session yesterday, but the stock soon regained strength and ended at NT$1,160, unchanged from Tuesday. Investors’ confidence in TSMC was likely built on its relatively small exposure to the Chinese market, as Chinese customers contributed about 9 percent to TSMC’s revenue last
With this year’s Semicon Taiwan trade show set to kick off on Wednesday, market attention has turned to the mass production of advanced packaging technologies and capacity expansion in Taiwan and the US. With traditional scaling reaching physical limits, heterogeneous integration and packaging technologies have emerged as key solutions. Surging demand for artificial intelligence (AI), high-performance computing (HPC) and high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips has put technologies such as chip-on-wafer-on-substrate (CoWoS), integrated fan-out (InFO), system on integrated chips (SoIC), 3D IC and fan-out panel-level packaging (FOPLP) at the center of semiconductor innovation, making them a major focus at this year’s trade show, according
DEBUT: The trade show is to feature 17 national pavilions, a new high for the event, including from Canada, Costa Rica, Lithuania, Sweden and Vietnam for the first time The Semicon Taiwan trade show, which opens on Wednesday, is expected to see a new high in the number of exhibitors and visitors from around the world, said its organizer, SEMI, which has described the annual event as the “Olympics of the semiconductor industry.” SEMI, which represents companies in the electronics manufacturing and design supply chain, and touts the annual exhibition as the most influential semiconductor trade show in the world, said more than 1,200 enterprises from 56 countries are to showcase their innovations across more than 4,100 booths, and that the event could attract 100,000 visitors. This year’s event features 17
Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), which assembles servers for Nvidia Corp, yesterday said that revenue last month rose 10.61 percent year-on-year, driven by strong growth in cloud and networking products amid continued front-loading orders for artificial intelligence (AI) server racks. Consolidated revenue expanded to NT$606.51 billion (US$19.81 billion) last month from NT$548.31 billion a year earlier, marking the highest ever in August, the company said in a statement. On a monthly basis, revenue was down 1.2 percent from NT$613.86 billion. Hon Hai, which is also a major iPhone assembler, added that its electronic components division saw significant revenue growth last month, boosted
RSS