DRAM chipmaker Nanya Technology Corp (南亞科技) yesterday reported that net profit inched up 0.4 percent last quarter, as foreign-exchange gains helped cushion the effect of flagging consumer electronics demand amid high inflation and COVID-19 lockdowns in China.
Net profit rose to NT$6.57 billion (US$220.3 million) from NT$6.55 billion in the first quarter, or earnings per share of NT$2.12 from NT$2.11 in the previous quarter.
While operating income last quarter contracted 14.3 percent sequentially to NT$5.36 billion, net income grew mainly due to non-operating income of NT$1.74 billion, more than half of which came from foreign-exchange gains, the company said.
Photo: Grace Hung, Taipei Times
Nanya Technology expects a rough quarter ahead amid increasing inflation worldwide and flagging consumer confidence, as well as uncertainty about production resumption in China.
China’s “zero COVID” policy has severely affected consumer spending in the world’s biggest economy and rippled through electronic supply chains there, Nanya Technology said.
“The third quarter will be a challenging period. The third quarter is usually a high season, but this year, it is unclear whether there would be a seasonal effect,” Nanya Technology president Lee Pei-ing (李培瑛) told an online news briefing yesterday.
“Demand for [DRAM] is dwindling in the short term,” Lee said.
Weak demand for DRAM chips for consumer electronics, mainly smartphones and notebook computers, would ultimately spread to memory chips used in servers, as people turn conservative about most products due to macroeconomic uncertainties, he said.
Any recovery in DRAM chip demand would hinge on improvements in global inflation, production resumption in China and economic stimulus measures from governments around the world, Lee said.
The average selling price is expected to dip further this quarter following a mid-single-digit percentage sequential decline last quarter on lingering impact from global inflation as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine led to surges in crude oil and natural gas prices, Lee said.
Gross margin is also under mounting pressure and likely to trend down this quarter from 44.1 percent in the quarter ending June 30, due to rising costs of raw materials, manufacturing equipment and electricity rate hikes of 15 percent, Lee said.
Foreign-exchange gains lifted gross margin by 0.2 percentage points last quarter from 43.9 percent in the first quarter, Lee said, but added that it is hard to predict how the market would move this quarter.
Major memorychip inventories rose last quarter and could continue rising in the second half of the year given an unfavorable external environment, he said.
Nanya Technology said it was sticking to its planned capital expenditure of NT$28.4 billion for this year, but delays in equipment delivery might trim the spending by about 10 percent.
Sweeping policy changes under US Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr are having a chilling effect on vaccine makers as anti-vaccine rhetoric has turned into concrete changes in inoculation schedules and recommendations, investors and executives said. The administration of US President Donald Trump has in the past year upended vaccine recommendations, with the country last month ending its longstanding guidance that all children receive inoculations against flu, hepatitis A and other diseases. The unprecedented changes have led to diminished vaccine usage, hurt the investment case for some biotechs, and created a drag that would likely dent revenues and
Macronix International Co (旺宏), the world’s biggest NOR flash memory supplier, yesterday said it would spend NT$22 billion (US$699.1 million) on capacity expansion this year to increase its production of mid-to-low-density memory chips as the world’s major memorychip suppliers are phasing out the market. The company said its planned capital expenditures are about 11 times higher than the NT$1.8 billion it spent on new facilities and equipment last year. A majority of this year’s outlay would be allocated to step up capacity of multi-level cell (MLC) NAND flash memory chips, which are used in embedded multimedia cards (eMMC), a managed
CULPRITS: Factors that affected the slip included falling global crude oil prices, wait-and-see consumer attitudes due to US tariffs and a different Lunar New Year holiday schedule Taiwan’s retail sales ended a nine-year growth streak last year, slipping 0.2 percent from a year earlier as uncertainty over US tariff policies affected demand for durable goods, data released on Friday by the Ministry of Economic Affairs showed. Last year’s retail sales totaled NT$4.84 trillion (US$153.27 billion), down about NT$9.5 billion, or 0.2 percent, from 2024. Despite the decline, the figure was still the second-highest annual sales total on record. Ministry statistics department deputy head Chen Yu-fang (陳玉芳) said sales of cars, motorcycles and related products, which accounted for 17.4 percent of total retail rales last year, fell NT$68.1 billion, or
In the wake of strong global demand for AI applications, Taiwan’s export-oriented economy accelerated with the composite index of economic indicators flashing the first “red” light in December for one year, indicating the economy is in booming mode, the National Development Council (NDC) said yesterday. Moreover, the index of leading indicators, which gauges the potential state of the economy over the next six months, also moved higher in December amid growing optimism over the outlook, the NDC said. In December, the index of economic indicators rose one point from a month earlier to 38, at the lower end of the “red” light.
RSS