Memory chipmakers Macronix International Co Ltd (旺宏電子) and Winbond Electronics Corp (華邦電) last month posted their best monthly revenue in six months, despite the US-China trade dispute posing a risk to the semiconductor industry.
Macronix, the world’s largest NOR flash memorychip maker, said revenue soared about 30 percent to NT$2.72 billion (US$86.57 million) last month, compared with NT$2.09 billion in April.
That represented an annual decline of 14.73 percent from NT$3.19 billion a year earlier, the company said in a statement on Thursday.
Macronix’s revenue for last month was the highest recorded since it posted revenue of NT$3.04 billion in November last year.
The chipmaker did not provide information about what drove the growth.
Macronix chairman Miin Wu (吳敏求) told investors in March that the worst period for the company’s operations had ended.
Business was expected to pick up in the second half unless trade tensions between US and China eased, boosting demand for NOR flash chips, as consumer electronics would be the early beneficiary, Wu said at the time.
Macronix also supplies read-only memory (ROM) chips to Japanese game console maker Nintendo Co.
Accumulated revenue during the January-to-May period contracted 28.5 percent to NT$10.84 billion, compared with NT$15.149 billion in the same period last year, Macronix said.
In a separate company statement, Winbond said its revenue rose 2.79 percent to NT$4.01 billion last month from NT$3.9 billion in April — the highest level in six months.
However, revenue last month declined 10.61 percent year-on-year, from NT$4.49 billion.
In the first five months, revenue sank 11.03 percent annually to NT$18.8 billion from NT$21.13 billion, the statement said.
Market researcher TrendForce Corp (集邦科技) said that DRAM chip prices would drop at a steeper rate of 10 to 15 percent sequentially this quarter, as the US’ Huawei Technologies Co (華為) ban would curb smartphone and server shipments from the Chinese firm.
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