UMC Q1 Reflects Upturn, CEO Says
Online staff -- Electronic News, 4/28/2004
United Microelectronics Corp. (UMC) today announced its unconsolidated operating results for Q1, showing noteworthy improvement over last year.
Revenue for the quarter was $769.08 million (25.33 billion Taiwanese dollars), an increase of 41.5 percent from $543.52 million (17.9 billion TWD) in the same quarter of last year. Gross profit was $231.16 million (7.61 billion TWD), up 177 percent from last year’s $83.21 million (2.74 billion TWD). Net income was $209.35 million (6.89 billion TWD) -- a huge improvement over the same quarter last year of $12.24 million (403 million TWD). The company cited high capacity utilization and improved average selling prices as key reasons for the significant improvements.
"Our first quarter results truly reflect the upturn in the global semiconductor industry," Jackson Hu, CEO at UMC, said in a statement. "During the first quarter, our quarter-over-quarter revenue growth reached 6.8 percent. This performance not only beat our original forecast, but also was significantly stronger than the seasonal pattern we have seen for the past few years. Strong demand from our customers, in particular from the communication and consumer sectors, was the main revenue driver for the quarter. The blended average selling price also benefited from the full utilization of advanced process capacity.
“We continue to enhance our position as a leader in the semiconductor foundry industry. In order to expand our capacity in response to strong customer demand, we invested further in manufacturing facilities. Our expansion efforts were highlighted by additional investment in our two state-of-the-art 300mm fabs, as well as by the acquisition of SiS Microelectronics Corp. Our total capacity, including the contribution of UMCi and SMC, will increase 20 percent year-over-year to 3.17 million 8-inch wafer equivalents by the end of 2004. In the deep sub-micron technology arena, we plan to further strengthen our leading-edge production technology and design support services. Our industry leading 90-nanometer technology entered full-scale commercial production at our 8-inch fab in the first quarter of 2004, and this technology will be extended to 12-inch production in the second quarter of 2004,” Hu continued.
Revenues by region remained relatively unchanged for UMC in Q1 with North America comprising 43 percent of overall revenue, Asia/Pacific with 37 percent, Europe at 16 percent, and Japan contributing 4 percent.
Additionally, the percentage of revenue from 0.13-micron and 0.15-micron geometries remained at 12 percent and 9 percent, respectively, in Q1 due to capacity constraints. The percentage of revenue from 0.18-micron and below technologies in the quarter increased to 50 percent, compared with 46 percent in Q4 2003.
With 72 percent of revenue from fabless semiconductor companies and 28 percent from IDMs, revenue from the communication market segment, consisting of such products xDSL, DSP, WLAN, LAN controllers, handset components and caller ID devices was the only area of applications that increased, which accounted for 42 percent of total revenue in 1Q04 due to strong demand for DSP chips used in cellular phones. |
