Inotera Memories Inc (華亞科技) yesterday revised upward its financial forecast for this quarter after better-than-expected demand boosted its price and gross margins.
Inotera — a DRAM venture launched jointly by Micron Technology Inc and Nanya Technology Corp (南亞科技) — said that it expects the current growth momentum to continue into the next quarter, driven by strong seasonal demand and slim supply-chain inventory.
In the current quarter, “market prices are set to be higher than in the first quarter, instead of remaining flat, as we had expected a month ago,” chairman Charles Kau (高啟全) told an investors’ conference organized yesterday by the Taiwan Stock Exchange Corp.
“Demand for PCs has been surprisingly strong in the second quarter and inventory has been low,” Kau added.
That should lead to an upward revision of Micron’s latest forecast of a 5 percent compound annual growth rate for DRAM chips used in PCs from last year to 2017, he said.
Wafer output is expected to grow 5 percent sequentially this quarter, faster than Inotera’s original prediction of a 1 percent increase, Kau said, adding that the company also predicts that its gross margin will surge this quarter, even though it already reached a historic high of 54 percent in the previous quarter.
Inotera had originally expected gross margin to be unchanged this quarter.
“We are optimistic about the third quarter, which is a hot season [for electronics industry],” he said.
Providing a bigger-picture outlook for the DRAM industry as a whole, the Inotera chairman said that DRAM chip prices would probably remain stable this year and the next because of limited growth in supply and increasing demand driven by diverse applications of the chips.
UBS Securities analyst Nicolas Gaudois yesterday forecast the joint venture’s revenue to climb to NT$78.14 billion (US$2.59 billion) this year, compared with the NT$58.99 billion reported last year.
Gaudois also bumped up his forecast for Inotera’s annual earnings per share to NT$5.97 and raised his target price on the company’s stock to NT$44 from NT$37 over the next 12 months.
UBS maintained a “buy” rating on Inotera shares, which rallied 1.41 percent to NT$39.55 yesterday in Taipei trading.
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