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.
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