DRAM chipmaker Nanya Technology Corp (南亞科技) yesterday posted a slight increase in revenue for last quarter on recovering demand, beating the company’s expectation of a 5 percent sequential decline.
That bodes well for the company’s business outlook for the current quarter.
“The average selling price decline is much milder than we thought in the first quarter. Overall the [industry] environment is not as bad as we expected,” Nanya spokesman Joseph Wu (吳志祥) said.
Revenue last month fell at a slower rate of 1.2 percent to NT$3.3 billion (US$101.89 million), from NT$3.34 billion in February, when revenue dropped about 11 percent sequentially.
Shipments last month grew 3 percent month-on-month, while the average selling price dropped 2.5 percent from a month earlier, Nanya Technology said.
Appreciation of the New Taiwan dollar against the US dollar eroded about 1.5 percent of the chipmaker’s revenue last month, it said.
During the quarter ending March 31, revenue inched up about 0.5 percent to NT$10.35 billion, compared with NT$10.34 billion in the final quarter last year.
“We still see [chip] prices under pressure, but now we are much more optimistic about the second quarter and the second half of this year [in terms of supply and demand],” Wu said.
Nanya president Lee Pei-ing (李培瑛) said he expected renewed demand from China and emerging markets would help alleviate pressure on average selling prices and help shrink revenue decline to a single-digit percentage sequentially for last quarter.
Inotera Memories Inc (華亞科技), a DRAM manufacturer that is 24 percent owned by Nanya, yesterday said revenue jumped 10.8 percent from NT$3.46 billion in February to NT$3.84 billion last month.
In the period from January to last month, revenue plunged 40.74 percent to NT$10.93 billion, compared with NT$18.45 billion in the same period last year.
Nanya has agreed to sell all of its stake in Inotera to US memory chipmaker Micron Technology Inc for about NT$47.6 billion. The transaction is expected to be completed in the middle of this year.
The Taoyuan-based firm also agreed to spend NT$31.5 billion on subscribing an unspecified amount of Micron shares later this year.
Separately, United Microelectronics Corp (UMC, 聯電), the nation’s second-largest contract chipmaker, yesterday posted a 36.29 percent spike in revenue from NT$9.48 billion in February to NT$12.92 billion last month.
That brought the chipmaker’s revenue last quarter to NT$34.4 billion, up 1.62 percent from NT$33.85 billion in the fourth quarter last year. On an annual basis, revenue contracted 8.62 percent from NT$37.65 billion.
The results are better than UMC’s forecast of a flattish revenue for last quarter on expectations that business was hitting the bottom after most customers’ inventories had returned to reasonable levels.
UMC chief executive officer Yen Po-wen (顏博文) told investors in January that “we expect our foundry revenue to remain flat [in the first quarter]. UMC is optimistic on the growth outlook for the foundry industry, led by communication and consumer products.”
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