DRAM chipmaker Nanya Technology Corp (南亞科技) yesterday saw last month’s revenue climb to a record high as the company offered a bulked-up, more cost-effective 20-nanometer chip to satisfy robust customer demand.
The gain marked the third consecutive month that the chipmaker broke a company record, as it benefits from the longest boom period for the DRAM industry since the second half of 2016.
Revenue last month rose 3.12 percent to NT$8.59 billion (US$280.85 million), compared with NT$8.33 billion in May and NT$4.19 billion in June last year, bringing second-quarter revenue up 30.85 percent to NT$24.6 billion from NT$18.8 billion in the first quarter, a company statement said.
Planning to convert more chips from 30 nanometer to 20 nanometer technology and to sell more of the higher-priced DDR4 chips, Nanya Technology expects second-quarter shipments to grow at a quarterly rate of 15 percent from the first quarter.
DDR4 chips deliver 20 to 30 percent more of a price premium than the DDR3 chips, the company said, adding that it expects shipments this year to increase 48 percent year-on-year.
The revenue growth was also supported by constant price increases. DRAM chip prices have been increasing since the second half of 2016 due to a supply crunch, although price increases are slowing.
The average selling price during the second quarter was expected to increase by a low-to-middle single digit percentage as demand continued to outpace supply, following a 6.1 percent price increase in the first quarter, Nanya Technology said in May.
The price uptrend is expected to carry into the current quarter, driven by seasonal demand for DRAM chips used in servers and mobile phones, the chipmaker projected at the time.
In particular, most high-end smartphones are to be equipped with bigger memory of about 6 gigabytes, Nanya Technology said.
Increasing replacement demand for entry-level smartphones in developing countries such as India and Indonesia would also spur demand for memory chips, it said.
In the first six months of this year, revenue soared 74.56 percent to NT$43.39 billion, compared with NT$24.86 billion during the same period last year, it said.
About 65 percent of the chipmaker’s revenue came from niche DRAM chips for consumer electronics such as TVs, while 15 percent came from low-power DRAM chips for mobile phones and about 10 percent from PC DRAM chips, it said.
Shares in Nanya Technology yesterday inched up 0.99 percent to close at NT$81.8 in Taipei trading.
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