Macronix International Co Ltd (旺宏), the world’s biggest supplier of NOR flash memory chips, yesterday said net profit last quarter grew 22 percent quarter-on-quarter as stay-at-home and remote learning trends boosted demand for chips used in PCs and Nintendo Co’s game consoles.
Net profit expanded to NT$1.62 billion (US$56.05 million), from NT$1.33 billion in the second quarter. That translated into earnings per share of NT$0.88, up from NT$0.72 a quarter earlier.
On an annual basis, net profit slumped 13 percent from NT$1.85 billion, or NT$1.01 a share, due to a higher tax payment, the company said.
Photo: Hung Yu-fang, Taipei Times
Gross margin last quarter climbed to 36 percent, the highest since the second quarter of 2018, on higher inventory valuation, the company’s financial statement showed.
Revenue last quarter climbed 18 percent quarter-on-quarter to NT$11.91 billion, the second-highest level in the company’s history.
Macronix gave a relatively positive outlook for the current quarter.
“Our factories are all fully utilized,” company chairman Miin Wu (吳敏求) told investors via teleconference. “Prices for NOR [flash memory chips] are quite stable. Customers are not arguing for [price cuts].”
On top of that, Wu expects NOR flash memory chip supply constraints to worsen next year given fewer suppliers, if the US-China trade dispute remains unsolved.
Macronix already benefits from the escalating dispute between the world’s two biggest economies, as it is seeing new orders trickling after US suppliers of ZTE Corp (中興) were banned from shipping products to the Chinese company without a license.
“Customers are seeking chip replacements for any contingency, though the US government does not ban the use of ZTE [equipment in the US],” Wu said. “We have been seeing new order transfers in the past few months.”
Looking ahead, the Hsinchu-based company gave a positive business outlook.
Wu said Macronix has secured contracts from Apple Inc’s OLED panel suppliers to supply NOR-flash memory chips used in the high-definition displays for the US company’s latest iPhone 12 series.
Macronix has a 50 percent allotment of the orders, he said.
However, the US government’s export restrictions on Huawei Technologies Co (華為) and a ban on using Huawei’s 5G base stations would have an adverse effect on its revenue, as Huawei is its third-largest customer, the company said.
The chipmaker is seeking new orders to fill the void left by Huawei, Wu said.
Macronix expects the automotive sector, particularly autonomous vehicles, industrial devices and medical devices to be its next growth drivers, he said.
Macronix is evaluating expanding its 12-inch wafer capacity to cope with rising customer demand for its first 3D NAND flash memory chips, but no plan has been finalized, the company said.
It plans to ship its first 3D NAND flash memory chip to its customers next month and expects the new chips to contribute to revenue next year, Wu said.
This year, the chipmaker plans to spend NT$6.5 billion on capital expenditures. It is to shut down an older-generation 6-inch fab in the first quarter next year.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
MAJOR BENEFICIARY: The company benefits from TSMC’s advanced packaging scarcity, given robust demand for Nvidia AI chips, analysts said ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it is raising its equipment capital expenditure budget by 10 percent this year to expand leading-edge and advanced packing and testing capacity amid strong artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing chip demand. This is on top of the 40 to 50 percent annual increase in its capital spending budget to more than the US$1.7 billion to announced in February. About half of the equipment capital expenditure would be spent on leading-edge and advanced packaging and testing technology, the company said. ASE is considered by analysts