Contract chipmaker Powerchip Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp (力積電) yesterday posted deeper quarterly losses of NT$3.33 billion (US$113.07 million) for last quarter, dragged by impairment losses related to foreign-exchange rate fluctuations.
That compared with losses of NT$1.1 billion in the first quarter and NT$1.96 billion in the second quarter last year, the chipmaker said in a report.
Powerchip reported losses per share of NT$0.8 last quarter, expanding from NT$0.26 a quarter earlier and NT$0.54 a year ago.
Photo: Grace Hung, Taipei Times
The appreciation of the New Taiwan dollar incurred NT$1.59 billion in impairment losses on the company’s US dollar-denominated assets, Powerchip president Martin Chu (朱獻國) told an online earnings conference.
The NT dollar gained about 4.89 percent to NT$31.2 against the greenback last quarter, Chu said.
The strong local currency also negatively affected the company’s gross margin, leading to a bigger gross loss of NT$1.02 billion last quarter, compared with gross loss of NT$536 million in the first quarter and gross loss of NT$486 million in the second quarter last year, he said.
Customers are becoming more prudent about placing new orders for the third quarter, as front-loading demand for logic chips cools down ahead of a US tariffs deadline on Friday next week, Powerchip said.
“It requires more observations to get a clearer picture about the third-quarter situation,” Chu said. “Visibility remains low and customers are more conservative.”
Powerchip said it is seeing encouraging signs of recovery with new orders for memory chips flowing in as the world’s major players phase out older-generation DDR4 DRAM chips and low-density single-level-cell NAND flash memory chips.
Improving demand has driven up DRAM prices since last month, Chu said.
The company expects the momentum to carry over into the second half of this year, thanks to recovering demand and healthy inventory.
In addition, demand is increasing for silicon interposers used in advanced Chip-on-Wafer-on-Substrate packaging technology for artificial intelligence chip manufacturing processes, the firm said.
To cope with growing demand, it plans to set aside new capital expenditure of NT$2.65 billion this year to double its silicon interposer capacity, the company added.
The capacity expansion would boost revenue contribution from its silicon interposer business to about 8 percent of the company’s total revenue from 2 percent last quarter, it said.
Powerchip also plans to add new equipment and capacity to boost production of gallium nitride (GaN) semiconductors used in AI servers, as it is to take over from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) as a new supplier of high-voltage GaN chips to Navitas Semiconductor Inc, it said.
TSMC plans to withdraw from the GaN semiconductor business in two years.
Capital expenditure this year would total US$454 million as planned, Powerchip said.
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