Ending five consecutive months of contractions, DRAM chipmaker Nanya Technology Corp (南亞科技) yesterday said revenue grew last month, adding that improving demand points to an uptick in business for the rest of the year.
Revenue expanded 5.68 percent to NT$3.06 billion (US$94.99 million) last month, compared with NT$2.9 billion in May, a company statement said.
“The second quarter was a slack period, but since last month we have been seeing indicators that market demand is trending upward,” Nanya assistant vice president Joseph Wu (吳志祥) said by telephone.
PC DRAM prices on the spot market are rebounding and prices for memorychips used in consumer electronics and mobile phones are stabilizing, Wu said.
Nanya’s shipments increased 9 percent last month from May, while prices dropped by 2.5 to 3 percent, Wu said. On a quarterly basis, the DRAM chipmaker’s revenue contracted 14.04 percent to NT$8.94 billion from the first quarter’s NT$10.4 billion, Wu said.
Average selling prices fell by a single-digit percentage sequentially last quarter as Nanya predicted, Wu said.
“The second half will be better than the first half, as the supply-demand situation will be healthier,” Wu said.
Supply is expected to grow at a slower rate, as the world’s major memorychip makers trim capital spending on DRAM, while focusing resources on expanding NAND flash production to cope with rising demand, Wu said.
Nanya is scheduled to release last quarter’s earnings and a detailed financial forecast for the current quarter on July 27.
DRAM prices are expected to rise by 4 to 8 percent this quarter from last quarter, as South Korean suppliers reduce output, TrendForce Corp (集邦科技) analyst Avril Wu (吳雅婷) said.
Nanya declined to comment on the forecast.
A strong indicator that prices might be heading for a rebound emerged last month, with the average contract price of benchmark DDR3 4GB little changed month-on-month at US$12.5 per unit after declining by 62 percent over the past two years, TrendForce said.
“Due to tightening supply, first-tier PC original equipment manufacturers started their third-quarter contract negotiations [with chip suppliers] last month, earlier than before,” Wu said in a report released last week.
South Korean suppliers began cutting PC DRAM chip output last quarter after prices fell to about cost level, Wu said
There is good news from the demand side as well. The average DRAM content per smartphone is expected to grow 36 percent this year from last year, which will help digest DRAM inventories, Wu said.
An annual increase of 25 percent in application servers’ DRAM content would also help, she said.
“On the whole, demand from mobile and application servers will effectively consume the excess capacity as a result of suppliers adjusting their product mixes,” Wu said.
Separately, Inotera Memories Inc (華亞科技) — in which Nanya has a 24 percent stake — yesterday said its revenue fell 11.9 percent to NT$3.61 billion last month from May’s NT$4.1 billion.
Second-quarter revenue rose 5.83 percent to NT$11.44 billion from NT$10.81 billion in the first quarter, the company said.
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