Silicon Motion Technology Corp (慧榮科技), the world’s biggest supplier of controllers used in NAND flash memory chips, yesterday said it plans to invest NT$4 billion (US$141.31 million) to build a new headquarters in Hsinchu County’s Jhubei City as chip demand continues to grow.
The NASDAQ-listed company said that it expects robust demand for NAND flash memory chips used in smartphones, PCs and Internet-of-Things (IoT) applications to help fuel growth of its revenue.
Revenue this year is forecast to increase by 20 to 30 percent to US$650 million to US$700 million, from US$539.52 million last year, which was up 17 percent from 2019, Silicon Motion Technology said in a statement.
Photo: Liao Hsieh-ju, Taipei Times
Next year, revenue is predicted to hit US$1 billion, it said.
The 25-story building would be big enough for 1,500 employees when construction finishes in 2024, it said.
Silicon Motion Technology has a global workforce of 1,350, it said.
It would operate a research and development center, and a testing lab at the new facility, while it is also planning to build a facility in Taipei’s Nangang District (南港) via an urban renewable project, the company said.
It expects an unseasonally strong first quarter and an extremely strong order book this year, but sales growth might be capped by foundry supply availability, Silicon Motion president Wallace Kou (苟嘉章) said.
The capacity shortage is expected to carry into next year, as some foundries — such as China’s Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (中芯國際) — have scaled back investment in capacity expansion for less advanced 28-nanometer technology, local news firms quoted Kou as saying at a groundbreaking ceremony for the Jhubei headquarters.
To solve this problem, foundries should diversify some resources to expand capacity for matured technologies, rather than investing too much in cutting-edge technologies, he said.
The company is seeing strong, broad-based demand this year for controllers for solid-state drives (SSD), embedded multimedia cards (eMMC) and universal flash storages (UFS), media reported.
This momentum is expected to carry over to next year, Kou said.
PC makers are driving strong demand for SSD controllers, while smartphone and IoT device producers are boosting demand for UFS and eMMC mobile storage controllers, he said.
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