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To: Jerome who wrote (4174)	7/21/2000 10:12:16 AM
From: Proud_Infidel	Respond to of 5867

IC Designers Expected to Raise Second Half Sales Projections July 21, 2000 (TAIPEI) -- Taiwan's IC designers, characterized by a dashing mixture of high profits, high risk and high P/E ratios, have been the stars of the stock market recently. And they are expected to lead the market back upwards in the second half of the year. With the design industry booming in the first half of the year, IC designers VIA Technologies, Inc., Realtek Semiconductor Corp., Faraday Technology Corp. and Spring Soft Incorporation expect to revise their full-year financial projections upwards. Sunplus Technology Co. Ltd., Myson Technology Co. Ltd. and Elan Microelectronics Corp. report that they have already met more than 40 percent of their annual sale targets in the first half, even before the onset of the peak sales period in the fall. VIA Technologies, whose financial projections are usually conservative, forecast annual sales for 2000 at a modest NT$20.8 billion. Given that the company already reached 61.1 percent of this target by the end of June, and expects healthy sales of chipset outputs in the second half of the year, VIA's annual sales are now expected to be between NT$35 billion and NT$40 billion, nearly twice as high as its forecast and translating into earnings per share of at least NT$12. The company is expected to make an ex-right issue, and scale up its financial projections at the end of August. (NT$30.93 = US$1) Realtek Semicon announced that it has achieved 67.56 percent of its annual sales target of NT$4 billion in the first half, a higher proportion than any other IC designer. Its local-area network (LAN) three-in-one card, this year's core product, may win half the global market, putting the company on track for full-year 2000 sales of NT$6.5 billion. Realtek's Phy switch chip is expected to take a similar coup next year, bringing the company further healthy profits. Faraday Technology is also tipped to tear up its earlier sales forecast and replace it with a better one. The company's January-June sales amounted to NT$1.07 billion, 53.49 percent of its annual target, and its pretax profits amounted to NT$300 million, more than 60 percent of the annual target and equivalent to earnings-per-share of NT$3.5. The market predicts that Faraday's full-year 2000 sales could reach as high as NT$2.2 billion. Spring Soft met 49.1 percent of its annual sales target and 63 percent of its profit target in the first half, and the market expects the company to revise its full-year forecasts upward soon. Spring Soft specializes in designing bug-hunting software for the higher end of the programming market, and is expected to win 25 percent to 30 percent of the global market this year. (Commercial Times, Taiwan)