Chip packaging services provider ChipMOS Technologies Inc (南茂科技) yesterday said it expects next year to be a promising one for the global memory industry, driven mainly by strong demand for chips used in artificial intelligence (AI) data centers.
The company’s upbeat forecast echoed the sentiment of local memorychip makers and memory module suppliers including Winbond Electronics Corp (華邦電子) and Phison Electronics Corp (群聯電子).
“Next year will be a good year for the memory [chip industry]. It will be a quite good year for high-bandwidth memory, [DRAM] DDR5, DDR4, NAND or for NOR flash,” ChipMOS chairman Cheng Chih-chieh (鄭世杰) said at an earnings conference.
Photo: Grace Hung, Taipei Times
ChipMOS’ memory packaging revenue grew 16 percent sequentially last quarter, an annual growth of 24.9 percent, Cheng said.
Memory-related business accounted for 48.9 percent of the company’s revenue last quarter, up from 45.3 percent in the previous quarter and 36.3 percent a year earlier. The company posted NT$6.14 billion (US$197.7 million) in overall revenue, the highest in about three years.
To meet customer demand, ChipMOS plans to moderately expand DRAM and flash memory packaging capacity through enhancing productivity of existing manufacturing equipment, Cheng said.
The company would be prudent about adding large-scale chip packaging capacity, unless it secures long-term supply agreements with new chip prices, he said.
ChipMOS is looking at raising prices again to pass on rising costs to customers, as the costs of gold and raw materials such as silicon substrates have been increasing, he said.
The company last quarter hiked prices by 5 to 8 percent, he added.
ChipMOS recorded a net profit of NT$352.2 million last quarter after booking a foreign exchange gain of NT$84 million, from a net loss of NT$533.1 million in the second quarter, when it recorded a foreign exchange loss of NT$690 million.
On an annual basis, net profit expanded 17.6 percent from NT$299.4 million, the company said.
Cheng said ChipMOS expects the growth momentum in the memory market to persist this quarter on the back of robust enterprise demand for DRAM and flash memory used in AI data centers.
Additionally, the number of memory chips installed on a single device is increasing, he said.
However, the driver integrated circuit (IC) testing and packaging business is expected to remain weak this quarter, following an end to front-loading demand in the TV and smartphone segments, the company.
Separately, high-speed data transmission chip designer ASMedia Technology Inc (祥碩) yesterday said it has secured a deal to design application-specific ICs for a second customer and expects the deal to generate a revenue stream in the second half of next year.
Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) has been ASMedia’s only customer for years. ASMedia helps design motherboard chipsets for AMD desktop platforms.
ASMedia expects record revenue next year, company president Lin Che-wei (林哲偉) said.
Chip designing business accounted for about 60 percent of the company’s revenue in the third quarter. Its net profit surged 41 percent quarter-on-quarter to NT$1.58 billion. That represented an annual growth of 62 percent from NT$974 million.
Earnings per share jumped to NT$21.21 from NT$15.02 in the second quarter and NT$13.06 a year earlier.
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