Nanya Technology Corp (南亞科技), the nation’s biggest PC DRAM chipmaker, posted its third-straight month of revenue growth for last month, as reduced PC inventories buoyed chip demand and chip prices, bringing some relief to the struggling DRAM industry.
Revenues increased at the rate of 8.5 percent last month to NT$2.79 billion (US$93 million), compared to NT$2.57 billion in September, according to a company statement released by the Taoyuan-based chipmaker on Thursday.
Compared to October last year, last month’s revenues were down 26.2 percent from NT$3.78 billion.
The rebound could be short-lived because the floods in Thailand were poised to disrupt supplies of hard disk drives and thereby hinder PC shipments hitting chip demand, as Nanya Technology vice president Pai Pei-lin (白培霖) told reporters last month.
Thailand is the world’s second-biggest hard disk drive exporter after China.
The company’s order visibility was low and it was difficult to forecast price trends, Pai said.
Output would grow between 5 percent and 10 percent this quarter from last quarter, he said.
Non-stop price decline has caused massive losses to DRAM chipmakers, especially Taiwanese companies who lag behind global rivals in migrating to next--generation technologies, which help reduce costs by doubling output.
Nanya said third-quarter losses deepened to NT$11.96 billion after prices plunged 32 percent in just three months, compared with losses of NT$7.9 billion in the second quarter.
Inotera Memories Inc (華亞科技), Nanya’s DRAM joint venture with US memory chipmaker Micron Technology Inc, also said revenues rose 3.8 percent month-on-month, or up 3.1 percent year-on-year, to NT$2.99 billion last month.
Rexchip Electronics Corp (瑞晶電子), a local DRAM subsidiary of Japan’s Elpida Memory Inc, posted almost 20 percent growth for last month’s revenues at NT$1.96 billion from September’s NT$1.64 billion, putting an end to a five-month decline.
However, local memory chipmaker Powerchip Technology Corp (力晶科技) posted 4.87 percent lower revenues, at NT$2.15 billion for last month, compared with NT$2.26 billion in the previous month. It blamed the decline on stagnant DRAM chip demand.
To battle the industrial slump, Powerchip has halved its DRAM production and shifted its capacity to the contract chip manufacturing business, which is less volatile.
Powerchip only supplies DRAM chips to Elpida in exchange for technological support from the Tokyo--based company.
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