DRAM chipmaker Nanya Technology Corp (南亞科技) yesterday said it expected chip prices to climb further this quarter due to supply constraints, which helped boost the company’s net profit last quarter as it skyrocketed by a factor of six.
To mitigate supply scarcity, the company plans a record-high capital expenditure of NT$50 billion (US$1.58 billion) this year, more than tripling from NT$13.4 billion last year, to push the construction of a new plant, it said.
The new plant is to enter volume production in the first half of next year, Nanya Technology president Lee Pei-ing (李培瑛) said during an earnings conference.
Photo: Grace Hung, Taipei Times
The company expects to have monthly capacity to manufacture 20,000 12-inch wafers by the first half of 2028, he said.
“Artificial intelligence [AI] servers and general-purpose servers are driving DRAM demand in 2026. Supply shortages are to persist for multiple DRAM products, such as DDR5, low-power DDR5, DDR4, low-power DDR4 and DDR3,” Lee said.
Demand would be fueled by adoption of high-bandwidth and high-density memory chips for more cloud-based and edge-based applications, he said.
The AI boom is driving demand for high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips and crowding out supply of less advanced DRAM chips such as DDR4 and low-power DDR4, Lee said, adding that he expected DRAM supply to grow mildly this year and next year.
Nanya Technology’s chip shipments are estimated to grow 10 percent this year following an increase of 50 percent last year, Lee said.
About 70 percent of the company’s shipments are DDR4 and low-power DDR4, which face the tightest supply worldwide, he said.
Micron Technology Inc’s acquisition of a DRAM plant from Powerchip Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp (力積電) is not likely to sway the DRAM supply-demand situation this year and even in the first half of next year, as it would take time for Micron to buy equipment to support its chip technology, Lee said.
With only a small portion of its chips shipped directly to the US, Nanya Technology has no plans to build a plant there, he said.
DRAM price hikes are expected to endure this quarter to support the company’s gross margin improvement, though the pace would be less than the 30 percent increases in the fourth quarter last year, Lee said.
The company yesterday reported net profit ballooned to NT$11.08 billion in the fourth quarter of last year, compared with NT$1.56 billion the previous quarter and a net loss of NT$1.57 billion a year earlier.
Earnings per share rose to NT$3.58 from NT$0.5 a quarter ago and losses of NT$0.51 per share a year earlier.
Gross margin jumped to 49 percent, from 18.5 percent in the third quarter and minus-10.6 percent a year ago.
For the whole of last year, Nanya Technology showed a net profit of NT$6.6 billion from a net loss of NT$5.08 billion in 2024. Earnings per share improved to NT$2.13 from the previous year’s losses per share of NT$1.64.
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