Macronix International Co (旺宏電子), the world’s biggest NOR flash memorychip maker, yesterday said its revenue would grow quarter-on-quarter in the second half of this year due to resilient demand and price hikes.
The forecast goes against a broader downtrend in the semiconductor industry, which has begun experiencing inventory corrections after COVID-19 restrictions, inflation and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine dented market consumption.
“With half of the year having passed by, the company does not see any dark clouds over the NOR flash memory business. The outlook for next year is not certain yet, as the war, [COVID-19] pandemic and China’s zero COVID policy will affect the whole situation,” Macronix president C.Y. Lu (盧志遠) told an online investors’ conference.
Photo courtesy of Macronix International Co
The company is very confident that its revenue would grow quarter-on-quarter this quarter, Lu said.
Increased demand for NOR flash memory chips used in vehicles would fill the capacity void left by chips used in consumer electronics, he said.
The company expects factory utilization to remain at full capacity through the end of this year, he said.
The company’s book-to-bill ratio did slide from a large figure last year, but it is still well above one, meaning that demand is surpassing what it can supply, he added.
Macronix supplies advanced ultra-high-quality memory chips to the world’s top five automotive chip suppliers, including NXP Semiconductors NV, Renesas Electronics Corp and STMicroelectronics NV.
Addressing investors’ concerns about the increase in its inventory, Lu said that about half of the company’s inventory has been prepared for Nintendo Co ahead of the shopping season in the second half.
Following seasonal patterns, the company expects to deplete the inventory by the end of the year, he said.
Macronix said its net profit surged 52 percent to NT$2.94 billion (US$98.28 million) last quarter, compared with NT$1.93 billion a year earlier. It was little changed from NT$2.93 billion in the first quarter.
Earnings per share rose to NT$1.59 last quarter, from NT$1.04 a year earlier and NT$1.58 a quarter earlier. Gross margin fell slightly to 48.2 percent last quarter from 48.3 percent in the second quarter. On an annual basis, gross margin improved from 39.1 percent.
In the first half, net profit hit a new high of NT$5.86 billion, more than double the NT$2.84 billion recorded over the same period last year. Earnings per share climbed to NT$3.17 from NT$1.54.
BUSINESS UPDATE: The iPhone assembler said operations outlook is expected to show quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year growth for the second quarter Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday reported strong growth in sales last month, potentially raising expectations for iPhone sales while artificial intelligence (AI)-related business booms. The company, which assembles the majority of Apple Inc’s smartphones, reported a 19.03 percent rise in monthly sales to NT$510.9 billion (US$15.78 billion), from NT$429.22 billion in the same period last year. On a monthly basis, sales rose 14.16 percent, it said. The company in a statement said that last month’s revenue was a record-breaking April performance. Hon Hai, known also as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), assembles most iPhones, but the company is diversifying its business to
Apple Inc has been developing a homegrown chip to run artificial intelligence (AI) tools in data centers, although it is unclear if the semiconductor would ever be deployed, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. The effort would build on Apple’s previous efforts to make in-house chips, which run in its iPhones, Macs and other devices, according to the Journal, which cited unidentified people familiar with the matter. The server project is code-named ACDC (Apple Chips in Data Center) within the company, aiming to utilize Apple’s expertise in chip design for the company’s server infrastructure, the newspaper said. While this initiative has been
GlobalWafers Co (環球晶圓), the world’s No. 3 silicon wafer supplier, yesterday said that revenue would rise moderately in the second half of this year, driven primarily by robust demand for advanced wafers used in high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips, a key component of artificial intelligence (AI) technology. “The first quarter is the lowest point of this cycle. The second half will be better than the first for the whole semiconductor industry and for GlobalWafers,” chairwoman Doris Hsu (徐秀蘭) said during an online investors’ conference. “HBM would definitely be the key growth driver in the second half,” Hsu said. “That is our big hope
The consumer price index (CPI) last month eased to 1.95 percent, below the central bank’s 2 percent target, as food and entertainment cost increases decelerated, helped by stable egg prices, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday. The slowdown bucked predictions by policymakers and academics that inflationary pressures would build up following double-digit electricity rate hikes on April 1. “The latest CPI data came after the cost of eating out and rent grew moderately amid mixed international raw material prices,” DGBAS official Tsao Chih-hung (曹志弘) told a news conference in Taipei. The central bank in March raised interest rates by