Kobe Steel, Micron to Spend 20 Bln Yen to Boost DRAM Capacity
Kobe, Japan, March 14 (Bloomberg) -- Kobe Steel Ltd., Japan's third-largest steelmaker, and Micron Technology Inc. of the U.S., the No. 2 maker of computer memory chips, will spend an extra 20 billion yen ($167 million) during the year 2000 to expand production capacity at their joint venture in Japan, the Nihon Keizai newspaper reported, without citing sources. With the investment, which will fund new production lines at their KMT Semiconductor venture, the companies plan to be able to make more than 10 million 128-megabit dynamic random-access memory chips a month during 2000, making it Japan's largest maker of the DRAM chips. KMT is likely to post pretax profit of 1 billion yen in the year ending this month, after several years of losses, thanks to a recovery in DRAM prices since the final three months of last year, the report said.
Kobe Steel, which forecasts a second straight net loss for the fiscal year ending this month, last month appointed Vice President Koshi Mizukoshi, 60, its new president effective April 1, as part of a drive to regain profitability.
01:57:52 03/14/1999
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