DRAM chipmaker Nanya Technology Corp (南亞科技) expects selling prices this quarter to edge downward by a single-digit percentage or remain flat from last quarter as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and China’s COVID-19 lockdowns add to market uncertainty and dim business prospects.
As Russia’s war against Ukraine prompted raw material costs and shipping fees to surge, and concern has grown over rising inflation, placing a dent in consumer demand for electronics such as TVs, Nanya Technology president Lee Pei-ing (李培瑛) told an online media briefing yesterday.
“On the demand side, smartphone demand did slow a bit. Consumer notebook computers were also affected. High inflation and weaker consumer spending were likely the reasons. Seasonal factors were also behind the slowdown,” Lee said.
Photo: Grace Hung, Taipei Times
Demand for DRAM chips used in cloud-based servers, commercial laptops and gaming computers remains solid, he said.
“From prices in April, it looks like any price decline in the second quarter will be smaller, or even flat, compared with the first quarter,” Lee said. “But, there is a lot of uncertainty. We need to look at the market situation month by month for the rest of the quarter.”
Overall, DRAM prices this quarter are likely to dip by a low single-digit percentage on a quarterly basis, or remain unchanged, after a 5 percent decline in DRAM prices in the first quarter, Lee said.
Before the war, Nanya Technology expected a robust rebound in prices and estimated that DRAM prices would begin to climb in the second quarter.
However, the firm’s shipments in this quarter are likely to resemble the first quarter’s, Lee said yesterday.
The war in Ukraine has not had a significant effect on the company’s chip shipments due to its small exposure to Russia and Ukraine, Nanya Technology said, adding that it suspended shipments to Russia after it invaded its neighbor on Feb. 24.
The lockdown in Shanghai is bringing challenges to the whole supply chain, as customers try to find solutions to transport restrictions in China, Lee said, adding that the lockdown has made it difficult to transport goods in and out of the city.
Lee added that some customers had said that the curbs could remain in place until Monday next week in some districts of Shanghai.
Some customers have destined deliveries to Chongqing, a manufacturing hub for notebook computer makers, or even to Thailand, he said.
Nanya Technology yesterday posted NT$6.55 billion (US$225.47 million) in net profit for last quarter, up 1.5 percent quarter-on-quarter from NT$6.45 billion. That represented annual growth of 142 percent from NT$2.7 billion.
Earnings per share last quarter rose to NT$2.11 from NT$2.08 a quarter earlier and NT$0.88 a year earlier, while gross margin fell for a third straight quarter to 31.4 percent from 37.5 percent in the first quarter.
Construction of a 12-inch fab is to be postponed by two to three quarters due to red tape, Nanya Technology said, adding that the fab would likely begin mass production in 2025, not 2024.
The firm has this year budgeted NT$28.4 billion in capital spending to fund construction and expand capacity, and manufacture its first 10-nanometer class of chips — “10-nanometer class” includes using 10-nanometer to 20-nanometer advance process technologies.
SEMICONDUCTOR SERVICES: A company executive said that Taiwanese firms must think about how to participate in global supply chains and lift their competitiveness Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday said it expects to launch its first multifunctional service center in Pingtung County in the middle of 2027, in a bid to foster a resilient high-tech facility construction ecosystem. TSMC broached the idea of creating a center two or three years ago when it started building new manufacturing capacity in the US and Japan, the company said. The center, dubbed an “ecosystem park,” would assist local manufacturing facility construction partners to upgrade their capabilities and secure more deals from other global chipmakers such as Intel Corp, Micron Technology Inc and Infineon Technologies AG, TSMC said. It
EXPORT GROWTH: The AI boom has shortened chip cycles to just one year, putting pressure on chipmakers to accelerate development and expand packaging capacity Developing a localized supply chain for advanced packaging equipment is critical for keeping pace with customers’ increasingly shrinking time-to-market cycles for new artificial intelligence (AI) chips, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) said yesterday. Spurred on by the AI revolution, customers are accelerating product upgrades to nearly every year, compared with the two to three-year development cadence in the past, TSMC vice president of advanced packaging technology and service Jun He (何軍) said at a 3D IC Global Summit organized by SEMI in Taipei. These shortened cycles put heavy pressure on chipmakers, as the entire process — from chip design to mass
People walk past advertising for a Syensqo chip at the Semicon Taiwan exhibition in Taipei yesterday.
NO BREAKTHROUGH? More substantial ‘deliverables,’ such as tariff reductions, would likely be saved for a meeting between Trump and Xi later this year, a trade expert said China launched two probes targeting the US semiconductor sector on Saturday ahead of talks between the two nations in Spain this week on trade, national security and the ownership of social media platform TikTok. China’s Ministry of Commerce announced an anti-dumping investigation into certain analog integrated circuits (ICs) imported from the US. The investigation is to target some commodity interface ICs and gate driver ICs, which are commonly made by US companies such as Texas Instruments Inc and ON Semiconductor Corp. The ministry also announced an anti-discrimination probe into US measures against China’s chip sector. US measures such as export curbs and tariffs
RSS