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.
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
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
Huawei Technologies Co’s (華為) latest smartphones carry a version of the advanced made-in-China processor it revealed last year, results from an independent analysis showed. This underscored the Chinese company’s ability to sustain production of the controversial chip. The Pura 70 series unveiled last week sports the Kirin 9010 processor, research firm TechInsights found during a teardown of the device. This is a newer version of the Kirin 9000s, made by Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC, 中芯) for the Mate 60 Pro, which had alarmed officials in Washington who thought a 7-nanometer chip was beyond China’s capabilities. Huawei has enjoyed a resurgence since
purpose: Tesla’s CEO sought to meet senior Chinese officials to discuss the rollout of its ‘full self-driving’ software in China and approval to transfer data they had collected Tesla Inc CEO Elon Musk arrived in Beijing yesterday on an unannounced visit, where he is expected to meet senior officials to discuss the rollout of "full self-driving" (FSD) software and permission to transfer data overseas, according to a person with knowledge of the matter. Chinese state media reported that he met Premier Li Qiang (李強) in Beijing, during which Li told Musk that Tesla's development in China could be regarded as a successful example of US-China economic and trade cooperation. Musk confirmed his meeting with the premier yesterday with a post on social media platform X. "Honored to meet with Premier Li