Macronix International Co (旺宏), the world’s biggest supplier of NOR flash memory chips, yesterday posted its best April revenue, at NT$3.81 billion (US$136.52 million), lending support to its optimistic forecast about customer demand amid a persistent chip shortage.
Last month’s revenue rose 5.6 percent from NT$3.61 billion in March and 11.2 percent from NT$3.43 billion a year earlier, the company said in a statement.
Macronix has forecast a gradual growth in quarterly revenue through the end of the year, as customers scramble to secure chip supply, boosting its book-to-bill ratio to “a stunning level.”
Photo courtesy of Macronix Education Foundation
The chip supply crunch is expected to extend into next year, and chip prices are reflecting this tight market situation, company chairman Miin Wu (吳敏求) told a virtual investors’ conference last month.
Macronix saw aggregate revenue in the first four months of this year grow 4.6 percent to NT$13.44 billion, from NT$12.84 billion a year earlier.
Winbond Electronics Corp (華邦電子), another NOR flash memorychip maker, swung into a net profit of NT$1.71 billion last quarter, from losses of NT$86.65 million in the same period last year.
Gross margin jumped to 37.55 percent last quarter from 24.16 percent in the prior quarter, company data showed.
Winbond told investors that it expected price hikes to boost its revenue, leading to a further improvement in gross margin this quarter.
Earlier this week, DRAM chipmaker Nanya Technology Corp (南亞科技) reported that its revenue last month soared 31.58 percent year-on-year to a 31-month high of NT$7.39 billion. That also represented sequential growth of 15.4 percent from NT$6.41 billion.
Nanya Technology attributed last month’s growth to a 15 percent increase in prices from a quarter earlier.
Shipments were flat last month from the previous month, as it has been running at full capacity.
Adata Technology Co (威剛), a supplier of memory modules and solid-state drives (SSDs), yesterday said that revenue last month hit an 11-year high of NT$3.6 billion, up 70 percent annually from NT$2.07 billion.
On a monthly basis, revenue rose 7.43 percent from NT$3.35 billion in March, which the company attributed to robust SSD demand and higher NAND flash module prices.
Adata is bullish about demand for memory chips used in computers, servers, smartphones and cars for the rest of the year, chairman Simon Chen (陳立白) said in a statement yesterday.
As a result, the chip shortage is expected to deepen, supporting upticks in DRAM product prices until the end of this year, he said.
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