GlobalWafers Corp (環球晶圓), the world’s third-largest silicon wafer supplier, yesterday reported that net profit last quarter rose 2.6 percent from a quarter earlier and growth momentum would extend into this quarter and next year.
Net profit improved to NT$2.95 billion (US$92.28 million) in the July-to-September period, compared with NT$2.88 billion in the second quarter.
On an annual basis, net profit plummeted 46.7 percent from NT$5.54 billion.
Photo: Ann Wang, Reuters
Earnings per share rose to NT$6.18 last quarter from NT$6.02 in the second quarter, but declined from NT$12.73 in the third quarter last year.
The Hsinchu-based company said the worst has passed, and that revenue would pick up this quarter and next year, despite slower-than-expected inventory adjustments by customers.
Sagging demand for its compound semiconductors was another factor as revenue last quarter contracted 8.7 percent, GlobalWafers said.
“I think that fourth-quarter revenue will be higher than the second quarter and third quarter,” GlobalWafers chairwoman Doris Hsu (徐秀蘭) told investors yesterday.
The company hopes revenue next year would return to last year’s level of NT$70.65 billion, an all-time high, Hsu said.
“As inventory levels normalize at the end of the year, we anticipate a market recovery in 2025 driven by improving demand and capacity expansion by customers,” she said, adding that revenue growth would help alleviate rises in equipment costs and facility depreciation.
With an improving fab utilization rate, gross margin would “bottom out” next year, Hsu said.
Gross margin tumbled to the lowest in seven years at 30 percent last quarter, down from 36.6 percent a year earlier and 32.3 percent in the second quarter.
However, the recovery in customer demand was uneven last quarter, Hsu said.
Demand for advanced technology helped lift the utilization rate at its 12-inch fab to about 90 percent, but equipment loading for mature technology and 8-inch fabs remained low as a result of customers’ high chip inventories and sluggish demand for chips used in industrial devices and vehicles, she said.
GlobalWafers said it would continue supplying 6-inch wafers to customers in the vehicle sector, but it would raise wafer prices to reflect higher manufacturing costs.
In addition to US$400 million in direct funding from the CHIPS Act for its US investments, GlobalWafers said it has obtained a 25 percent tax credit based on the Advanced Manufacturing Investment Credit from the US government.
Nvidia Corp’s demand for advanced packaging from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) remains strong though the kind of technology it needs is changing, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) said yesterday, after he was asked whether the company was cutting orders. Nvidia’s most advanced artificial intelligence (AI) chip, Blackwell, consists of multiple chips glued together using a complex chip-on-wafer-on-substrate (CoWoS) advanced packaging technology offered by TSMC, Nvidia’s main contract chipmaker. “As we move into Blackwell, we will use largely CoWoS-L. Of course, we’re still manufacturing Hopper, and Hopper will use CowoS-S. We will also transition the CoWoS-S capacity to CoWos-L,” Huang said
Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) is expected to miss the inauguration of US president-elect Donald Trump on Monday, bucking a trend among high-profile US technology leaders. Huang is visiting East Asia this week, as he typically does around the time of the Lunar New Year, a person familiar with the situation said. He has never previously attended a US presidential inauguration, said the person, who asked not to be identified, because the plans have not been announced. That makes Nvidia an exception among the most valuable technology companies, most of which are sending cofounders or CEOs to the event. That includes
INDUSTRY LEADER: TSMC aims to continue outperforming the industry’s growth and makes 2025 another strong growth year, chairman and CEO C.C. Wei says Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), a major chip supplier to Nvidia Corp and Apple Inc, yesterday said it aims to grow revenue by about 25 percent this year, driven by robust demand for artificial intelligence (AI) chips. That means TSMC would continue to outpace the foundry industry’s 10 percent annual growth this year based on the chipmaker’s estimate. The chipmaker expects revenue from AI-related chips to double this year, extending a three-fold increase last year. The growth would quicken over the next five years at a compound annual growth rate of 45 percent, fueled by strong demand for the high-performance computing
TARIFF TRADE-OFF: Machinery exports to China dropped after Beijing ended its tariff reductions in June, while potential new tariffs fueled ‘front-loaded’ orders to the US The nation’s machinery exports to the US amounted to US$7.19 billion last year, surpassing the US$6.86 billion to China to become the largest export destination for the local machinery industry, the Taiwan Association of Machinery Industry (TAMI, 台灣機械公會) said in a report on Jan. 10. It came as some manufacturers brought forward or “front-loaded” US-bound shipments as required by customers ahead of potential tariffs imposed by the new US administration, the association said. During his campaign, US president-elect Donald Trump threatened tariffs of as high as 60 percent on Chinese goods and 10 percent to 20 percent on imports from other countries.
RSS