Losses have widened at Taiwan-based Powerchip Technology amid persisting oversupply of DRAM chips and dramatic price drops.
Powerchip has announced that net losses for the third quarter of 2011 rose to NT$6.66 billion (US$221 million) from NT$1.51 billion in the prior quarter, with revenues slipping 27% sequentially to NT$8.65 billion.
Powerchip's net losses for the first three quarters of 2011 amounted to NT$13.14 billion, translating into an EPS of negative NT$2.37.
Powerchip spokesperson Eric Tang said that during the third quarter, the company managed to reduce the ratio of PC DRAM to its total capacity to less than 50%. In the meantime, it allocated more capacity to produce non-DRAM products on an OEM basis with wafer starts for the foundry business exceeding 40,000 12-inch equivalent units a month, Tang indicated.
With the foundry segment growing steadily, Powerchip is looking to strengthen its financial structure and cash flow, Tang added.
Powerchip lands contract orders mainly for LCD driver ICs, CMOS image sensors, NAND flash and niche-market memory chips.
Nanya Technology has also revealed plans to reduce its reliance on PC DRAM, devoting more to products targeted at server and mobile device applications.
Nanya saw its net losses for third-quarter 2011 expand to NT$11.96 billion from NT$2.27 billion a year ago. The losses were also higher than the losses of NT$7.9 billion in the prior quarter.