GlobalWafers Co (環球晶圓), the world’s third-largest silicon wafer supplier, yesterday said revenue would increase at a much slower pace this year due to customers’ inventory adjustments and lackluster chip demand for smartphones, vehicles and industrial devices.
“The pickup in the second quarter was much weaker than we had thought,” GlobalWafers chairwoman Doris Hsu (徐秀蘭) told reporters following the firm’s annual general meeting. “We had expected a V-shape rebound, but that did not happen, and customers remain conservative about placing new orders due to high inventories.”
Another weak spot is the company’s compound semiconductor business — which includes the production of silicon carbide and gallium nitride chips — due to sagging electric vehicle demand and rapid growth in new capacity from China, Globalwafers said.
Photo: Grace Hung, Taipei Times
Revenue from the compound semiconductor business is expected to grow about 50 percent annually, rather than doubling or tripling as previously estimated, it said.
The only bright spots would be in artificial intelligence and high-performance computing applications, which propel demand for advanced memory chips such as high-bandwidth memory and DRAM chips, and in turn GlobalWafers’ advanced epitaxial wafers, it said.
The company said it anticipates better prospects next year, with customers’ inventory returning to healthy levels and PC replacement demand expected to stimulate chip consumption.
Separately, GlobalWafers said the EU Commission had issued an assignment decree awarding the firm’s Italian subsidiary MEMC Electronic Materials SpA a research-and-development grant of up to 103 million euros (US$110.4 million).
The Novara-based subsidy accounts for about 25 percent of the total investment of 420 million euros for the company’s planned 12-inch production facility in Italy.
“MEMC’s new fab will fill a critical gap in the European semiconductor supply chain that until now has been highly dependent on imports to supply wafers for the most advanced technology platforms,” GlobalWafers said.
The new plant would support the creation of downstream products, including sensors, logic applications, power and communications applications. It is set to ramp up production in the second half of next year, with an installed capacity of 100,000 wafers a month.
GlobalWafers expects the fab to help expand its market share in Europe from 30 percent currently, it said.
The investment is expected to create 600 construction jobs and 150 long-term company jobs, it added.
ADVANCED: Previously, Taiwanese chip companies were restricted from building overseas fabs with technology less than two generations behind domestic factories Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), a major chip supplier to Nvidia Corp, would no longer be restricted from investing in next-generation 2-nanometer chip production in the US, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. However, the ministry added that the world’s biggest contract chipmaker would not be making any reckless decisions, given the weight of its up to US$30 billion investment. To safeguard Taiwan’s chip technology advantages, the government has barred local chipmakers from making chips using more advanced technologies at their overseas factories, in China particularly. Chipmakers were previously only allowed to produce chips using less advanced technologies, specifically
BRAVE NEW WORLD: Nvidia believes that AI would fuel a new industrial revolution and would ‘do whatever we can’ to guide US AI policy, CEO Jensen Huang said Nvidia Corp cofounder and chief executive officer Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) on Tuesday said he is ready to meet US president-elect Donald Trump and offer his help to the incoming administration. “I’d be delighted to go see him and congratulate him, and do whatever we can to make this administration succeed,” Huang said in an interview with Bloomberg Television, adding that he has not been invited to visit Trump’s home base at Mar-a-Lago in Florida yet. As head of the world’s most valuable chipmaker, Huang has an opportunity to help steer the administration’s artificial intelligence (AI) policy at a moment of rapid change.
The New Taiwan dollar is on the verge of overtaking the yuan as Asia’s best carry-trade target given its lower risk of interest-rate and currency volatility. A strategy of borrowing the New Taiwan dollar to invest in higher-yielding alternatives has generated the second-highest return over the past month among Asian currencies behind the yuan, based on the Sharpe ratio that measures risk-adjusted relative returns. The New Taiwan dollar may soon replace its Chinese peer as the region’s favored carry trade tool, analysts say, citing Beijing’s efforts to support the yuan that can create wild swings in borrowing costs. In contrast,
TARIFF SURGE: The strong performance could be attributed to the growing artificial intelligence device market and mass orders ahead of potential US tariffs, analysts said The combined revenue of companies listed on the Taiwan Stock Exchange and the Taipei Exchange for the whole of last year totaled NT$44.66 trillion (US$1.35 trillion), up 12.8 percent year-on-year and hit a record high, data compiled by investment consulting firm CMoney showed on Saturday. The result came after listed firms reported a 23.92 percent annual increase in combined revenue for last month at NT$4.1 trillion, the second-highest for the month of December on record, and posted a 15.63 percent rise in combined revenue for the December quarter at NT$12.25 billion, the highest quarterly figure ever, the data showed. Analysts attributed the
RSS