DRAM chipmaker Nanya Technology Corp (南亞科技) yesterday posted its best quarterly profit in three quarters as work-from-home and remote schooling trends helped improve demand for Chromebooks and other consumer electronics.
The chipmaker said that it expects the growth momentum to extend into this quarter, as the global economic outlook has improved amid increasing COVID-19 vaccinations.
Recovering demand for servers is adding to the already resilient sales of notebook computers, mobile phones, TVs and networking devices, it said.
Photo: Grace Hung, Taipei Times
“We are close to finalizing contract negotiations for the second quarter,” Nanya president Lee Pei-ing (李培瑛) told a media briefing. “Prices are going up month by month in the second quarter.”
That bodes well for the chipmaker to report a better financial performance this quarter than last quarter, which was itself a significant improvement, Lee said.
Demand is strong in almost every segment, led by consumer electronics, so memorychip supply will become scarce this quarter, he said.
The supply constraints might last through the end of this year, hinging on COVID-19 vaccination rates and how a US-China trade spat develops, with “overbooking” and a supply crunch of key components crucial to supply-demand dynamics, he said.
There might be a crunch in TV supply chains similar to what occurred with a shortage of automotive chips, Lee said.
On the supply side, the increase of new DRAM manufacturing capacity is quite slow, as major global chipmakers are cautious about capital expenditure in the first half of this year, even though supply chain inventories are running low, Lee said.
Supply of less-advanced DDR3 DRAM has become tight lately, as some chipmakers have allocated capacity for image sensors and power management chips, he said.
That boosted DDR3 DRAM prices, he said.
DDR3 DRAM, which is mostly used in consumer electronics, accounts for 30 to 40 percent of Nanya’s total capacity, he added.
The company expects shipments to remain flat this quarter from last quarter, as its factories are fully utilized and cannot squeeze out chips any faster.
In the first quarter, net profit surged 40.3 percent to NT$2.71 billion (US$95.3 million) from NT$1.93 billion a year earlier, and rocketed 193 percent from NT$924 million the previous quarter.
Earnings per share climbed to NT$0.88, up from NT$0.63 a year earlier and NT$0.30 a quarter earlier.
Nanya said that it plans NT$15.6 billion in capital expenditure this year, mostly to develop 10-nanometer-class technology.
The chipmaker is accelerating development of its second-generation 10-nanometer-class technology with an eye to start production next quarter, the company added.
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