Nanya Technology Corp (南亞科技) yesterday reported its biggest quarterly loss in about a year, but the DRAM chipmaker said it has seen nascent signs indicating that the slump is close to bottoming out as rising demand is propping up chip prices.
Nanya Technology expects an improvement in demand for advanced DDR5 memory chips driven by growing demand for artificial-intelligence (AI) computing for enterprise cloud centers.
The company expects to see a rebound in smartphone sales in China this quarter and better PC demand following the launch of new chips by Intel Corp, it said.
Photo: Lisa Wang, Taipei Times
Strong demand for Huawei Technologies Co’s (華為) new phones did not benefit Nanya Technology, as it was not granted a waiver from the US to resume supply of DDR4 and low-power DDR4 chips to Huawei, it said.
On the supply side, overall chip inventory is slimming down as the world’s major memorychip makers have maintained capacity after reducing it, Nanya Technology said.
Additionally, chipmakers are concentrating on shifting capacity to next-generation high-end DDR5 and high-band-memory (HBM) chips mostly used in servers, leading to a lower supply of mainstream DDR4 chips, it said.
“Nanya has a chance to shrink its losses this quarter, as end-product demand is improving. In addition, chip prices are more stable than in the third quarter,” company president Lee Pei-ing (李培瑛) told an online media briefing yesterday. “The prices of DDR5 have picked up. We expect a slight increase in DDR3 and DDR4 prices in the fourth quarter. We have seen some early signs.”
Nanya Technology primarily supplies DDR4, low-power DDR4 and DDR3 memory chips. The chipmaker expects to add its first DDR5 chip to its product lineup by the end of next year.
The New Taipei City-based memorychip maker plans to cut factory utilization by about 20 percent this quarter, extending its output control measures from the past few quarters. Like most major memory chipmakers, Nanya Technology said its inventory is thinning, but has not returned to healthy levels yet.
Shipments would rise moderately this quarter on a quarterly basis, following 10 percent growth last quarter, Lee said.
Losses widened to NT$2.51 billion (US$78.14 million) during the July-to-September period, compared with the losses of NT$771 million in the second quarter, the company’s financial statement showed.
That marked the fourth straight unprofitable quarter.
Nanya Technology attributed the losses to costs for idle manufacturing equipment.
A sequential decline of a high single-digit percent in chip prices was also a major factor, it said.
Gross margin worsened to minus-25.2 percent last quarter from minus-11.2 percent the prior quarter.
Revenue increased 10.1 percent quarter-on-quarter to NT$7.74 billion last quarter from NT$7.03 billion.
The company plans to spend NT$15 billion on new facilities and equipment this year, down from NT$20.7 billion last year.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday obtained the government’s approval to inject an additional US$7.5 billion into its US subsidiary, the Department of Investment Review said in a statement. The department approved TSMC’s application of investing in TSMC Arizona Corp, which is engaged in the manufacturing, sales, testing and design of IC and other semiconductor devices, it said. The latest capital injection follows a US$5 billion investment for TSMC Arizona approved in June. The chipmaker has broken ground on two advanced fabs in Arizona with aggregated investments approved by the department totaling US$24 billion thus far. According to TSMC, the first Arizona
The lethal hack of Hezbollah’s Asian-branded pagers and walkie-talkies has sparked an intense search for the devices’ path, revealing a murky market for older technologies where buyers might have few assurances about what they are getting. While supply chains and distribution channels for higher-margin and newer products are tightly managed, that is not the case for older electronics from Asia where counterfeiting, surplus inventories and complex contract manufacturing deals can sometimes make it impossible to identify the source of a product, analysts and consultants say. The response from the companies at the center of the booby-trapped gadgets that killed 37
FRIENDLY TAKEOVER: While Qualcomm Inc’s proposal to buy some or all of Intel raises the prospect of other competitors, Broadcom Inc is staying on the sidelines Qualcomm Inc has approached Intel Corp to discuss a potential acquisition of the struggling chipmaker, people with knowledge of the matter said, raising the prospect of one of the biggest-ever merger and acquisition deals. California-based Qualcomm proposed a friendly takeover for Intel in recent days, said the sources, who asked not to be identified discussing confidential information. The proposal is for all of the chipmaker, although Qualcomm has not ruled out buying some parts of Intel and selling off others. It is uncertain whether the initial approach would lead to an agreement and any deal is likely to come under close antitrust scrutiny
SECURITY CONCERNS: The proposed ban on Chinese autonomous vehicle software and hardware would go into effect with the 2027 and 2030 model years respectively The US Department of Commerce today is expected to propose prohibiting Chinese software and hardware in connected and autonomous vehicles on US roads due to national security concerns, two sources said. US President Joe Biden’s administration has raised concerns about the collection of data by Chinese companies on US drivers and infrastructure as well as the potential foreign manipulation of vehicles connected to the Internet and navigation systems. The proposed regulation would ban the import and sale of vehicles from China with key communications or automated driving system software or hardware, said the two sources, who declined to be identified because the