Powerchip Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp (力積電), a power management IC supplier, expects to debut on the Taiwan Stock Exchange by the end of this year after shareholders yesterday approved the initial public offering.
The result of the vote indicates that the Powerchip group has emerged from woes caused by a severe industry slump after restructuring efforts, Powerchip chairman Frank Huang (黃崇仁) told the firm’s annual general meeting.
Powerchip in 2008 was spun off from Powerchip Technology Corp (力晶科技), a technology holding company.
Photo: I-Hwa Cheng, Bloomberg
Powerchip Technology, which started as a DRAM chipmaker, incurred debt of NT$120 billion (US$4.29 billion) because of an overcapacity-driven industry slump. It paid the debt back over the past few years.
Powerchip Semiconductor has a rosy business outlook for this year after transforming into a supplier of power management chips, image sensors and memory chips, given a persistent global chip crunch, Huang said.
“We are seeing an undersupply of memory and logic chips,” he said.
“That is why we started building a new plant at the Tongluo Science Park (銅鑼科學園區)” in Miaoli County, he added.
“Our capacity is fully booked for the whole of next year,” he said.
“Not a single wafer is left,” Huang said, dismissing shareholders’ concerns about another round of oversupply.
“It [a supply glut] is not likely to happen,” he said.
The new fab would have an installed capacity of 25,000 12-inch wafers per month in the first phase when it enters mass production in 2023, Powerchip Semiconductor said.
The company plans to invest NT$278 billion over the next 10 years to quadruple its capacity to 100,000 wafers a month, the company said.
The capacity expansion plan comes as Powerchip Semiconductor has had difficulty keeping up with orders, it said.
Given the demand, Powerchip Semiconductor president Brian Hsieh (謝再居) said that revenue would grow 30 to 40 percent this year from last year.
It made NT$45.68 billion last year.
Net profit growth would be even faster, Hsieh said, adding that it is expected to be much better than last year, when Powerchip Semiconductor earned NT$3.81 billion, or earnings per share of NT$1.23.
For the whole of this year, the chipmaker expects quarter-on-quarter growth in revenue and net profit, he said.
The company expects gross margin to keep rising, perhaps surpassing local rival Vanguard International Semiconductor Corp (世界先進) in the near future, said Huang, citing price hikes.
Vanguard posted gross margin of 38.1 percent in the first quarter.
Powerchip Semiconductor did not disclose its first-quarter gross margin, but said that pretax profit was NT$2.57 billion.
Powerchip Semiconductor operates two 8-inch fabs and three 12-inch fabs, while Vanguard operates four 8-inch fabs.
TECH RACE: The Chinese firm showed off its new Mate XT hours after the latest iPhone launch, but its price tag and limited supply could be drawbacks China’s Huawei Technologies Co (華為) yesterday unveiled the world’s first tri-foldable phone, as it seeks to expand its lead in the world’s biggest smartphone market and steal the spotlight from Apple Inc hours after it debuted a new iPhone. The Chinese tech giant showed off its new Mate XT, which users can fold three ways like an accordion screen door, during a launch ceremony in Shenzhen. The Mate XT comes in red and black and has a 10.2-inch display screen. At 3.6mm thick, it is the world’s slimmest foldable smartphone, Huawei said. The company’s Web site showed that it has garnered more than
CROSS-STRAIT TENSIONS: The US company could switch orders from TSMC to alternative suppliers, but that would lower chip quality, CEO Jensen Huang said Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳), whose products have become the hottest commodity in the technology world, on Wednesday said that the scramble for a limited amount of supply has frustrated some customers and raised tensions. “The demand on it is so great, and everyone wants to be first and everyone wants to be most,” he told the audience at a Goldman Sachs Group Inc technology conference in San Francisco. “We probably have more emotional customers today. Deservedly so. It’s tense. We’re trying to do the best we can.” Huang’s company is experiencing strong demand for its latest generation of chips, called
ISSUES: Gogoro has been struggling with ballooning losses and was recently embroiled in alleged subsidy fraud, using Chinese-made components instead of locally made parts Gogoro Inc (睿能創意), the nation’s biggest electric scooter maker, yesterday said that its chairman and CEO Horace Luke (陸學森) has resigned amid chronic losses and probes into the company’s alleged involvement in subsidy fraud. The board of directors nominated Reuntex Group (潤泰集團) general counsel Tamon Tseng (曾夢達) as the company’s new chairman, Gogoro said in a statement. Ruentex is Gogoro’s biggest stakeholder. Gogoro Taiwan general manager Henry Chiang (姜家煒) is to serve as acting CEO during the interim period, the statement said. Luke’s departure came as a bombshell yesterday. As a company founder, he has played a key role in pushing for the
Vanguard International Semiconductor Corp (世界先進) and Episil Technologies Inc (漢磊) yesterday announced plans to jointly build an 8-inch fab to produce silicon carbide (SiC) chips through an equity acquisition deal. SiC chips offer higher efficiency and lower energy loss than pure silicon chips, and they are able to operate at higher temperatures. They have become crucial to the development of electric vehicles, artificial intelligence data centers, green energy storage and industrial devices. Vanguard, a contract chipmaker focused on making power management chips and driver ICs for displays, is to acquire a 13 percent stake in Episil for NT$2.48 billion (US$77.1 million).
RSS