@SSTI
Fourth quarter results:
sst.com
Earnings CC Transcript:
seekingalpha.com
Some NOR/SPSN related parts from the CC
Bing Yeh:
"...What we can see is that near-term, we are going to see some softness. And we also see our competitors also have inventory image in NOR. That certainly going to impact the NOR business for near-term. But as we said, good news for us is that we are sitting at a very low inventory level..."
"...The NOR business continue to be very competitive. Essentially the demand for NOR, low-density NOR, as well as high-density NOR, actually is still there. It's very strong demand. The units continue to grow overall industry-wide. So to stay in this business, I believe requires a lot of technology advances as well as superiority in the technology itself. And I believe we have the right technology. And by working in a couple of new foundries to order smaller geometry and even go to 12-inch wafers, we have put us in a very competitive position. Overall, I have confidence that we can be an eventual survival in this NOR business. I believe in next few years you are going to see a shakeout of companies that cannot survive in this competitive environment."
Sal Kamalodine - B. Riley & Company:
"And as you look out over that time horizon, where do you think your focus will be in terms of densities? When you define lower densities and wanting to stick around the stick around the lower densities, where does that end up as you look at couple of years out and where are the bigger players like Spansion and Samsung, where are they going to be if you look out a couple of years in terms of densities? Is there a risk that they may come down into your part of the spectrum?"
Bing Yeh:
"We will continue to focus on the low-density portion. Today, we already have the product at a 64-megabit level. And when we continue to shrink our geometry, we may go up to 128 and mostly to 256-megabits. Above that, I think the market is not going to be attractive.
And the main reason in my belief has always been that for those high density memories, NAND would be a much better alternative in terms of costs. And by using NAND to get up with some sort of consulting that we also offer, we can create a product that essentially can replace a high density NOR. In fact, that was one of our strategies in driving the NAND module type of products."
My thoughts:
Samsung probably wants to keep its existing 8'' FABs running that will only be competitive in the low density NOR area. So I think Samsung poses a threat more to SSTI than to Spansion. So from my point of view SSTI will be one of the first to leave the NOR market.
Interesting that Salomon mentions Spansion and Samsung as the bigger NOR players. Isn't there anybody else? ;)
Regards |
