DRAM chipmaker Nanya Technology Corp (南亞科技) yesterday did not deny that it would continue supplying memory chips to Huawei Technologies Co (華為), as its exports fully in compliance with US trade rules.
Before Nanya, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (台積電), the world’s largest contract chipmaker, had said on May 24 that it is staying with Huawei after the Chinese firm on May 16 was added to a US trade blacklist.
Under US regulations, items not made in the US that contain more than 25 percent of US-origin content by value are subject to US export controls.
The memory chipmaker’s exports contain less than 25 percent of US-origin software and technolgoy preliminarily, according to sources from industry supply chain.
“We will comply with [local and international] regulations. We will do our best to satisfy demand and support our clients. Huawei is one of them,” Nanya chairman Wu Chia-chau (吳嘉昭) told its annual shareholders’ meeting in Taoyuan.
The company said it cannot comment on any single client’s operation.
The US sanctions on Huawei would not have a significant effect on Nanya’s business, the company said.
Huawei contributed about 3 percent to the chipmaker’s revenue of NT$11.37 billion (US$359.7 million) in the first quarter, Nanya said.
“That falls in a manageable range of between 3 and 5 percent,” Nanya president Lee Pei-ing (李培瑛) told reporters.
The chipmaker has expanded its customer base to about 200 companies, avoiding an overreliance on any single client, Lee said.
However, a trade dispute between the US and China has curtailed DRAM chip demand, with DRAM for use in data centers affected the most, he said.
Data centers and server assemblers have cut back on DRAM orders as they move their production lines out of China to avoid US tariffs, he said.
Nanya trimmed its annual growth forecast for global DRAM demand to 15 percent, from an earlier estimate of 20 percent.
After a four-quarter slump, demand across all segments began to improve this quarter, Lee said.
As an Intel Corp processor crunch is expected to ease next quarter, DRAM demand from PC vendors should bounce back, he said.
The recovery would cushion chip price declines, Lee said, dismissing a 25 percent quarterly slump forecast by market researcher TrendForce Corp (集邦科技) for this quarter.
The average selling price of Nanya’s products plummeted quarter-on-quarter by a low-20s percentage in the first quarter.
Shareholders yesterday approved a company proposal to distribute a cash dividend of NT$7.15 per common share. That represented an 11.92 percent yield based on Nanya’s closing stock price of NT$60 in Taipei yesterday.
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