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Technology Stocks : Applied Materials No-Politics Thread (AMAT) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Proud_Infidel who wrote (5011)	1/17/2003 5:58:50 PM
From: Proud_Infidel	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 25522

Update: Samsung's capex could surpass Intel's By Jack Robertson EBN (01/17/03 05:40 p.m. EST) Korea's Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. reported that it plans to spend $3.56 billion in semiconductor-only capital investment in 2003, up a whopping 90% from the $1.87 billion capex for last year. This doesn't include capex for the TFT-LCD portion of the group. Capital spending for all of Samsung Electronics including the telecommunications and digital appliance units is projected in 2003 at $5.09 billion, up 43% over $3.56 billion for 2002. Samsung Electronics Co.'s projected 2003 semiconductor capital investment of $3.5 billion is coming close to Intel Corp.'s estimated $3.5 billion to $3.9 billion capex for this year. Intel for several years has had the largest chip capital investment of any semiconductor firm. In fact, Samsung could exceed Intel if an additional $800 million is approved for the Korean chipmaker's dedicated S1 line in Onyang, Korea for System LSI chips. Samsung Semiconductor Inc. executives on Thursday gave this breakdown of expected 2003 capital spending for the Device Solutions Group, which includes semiconductors and TFT-LCD displays: Capex for memory chips, including DRAMs, flash, SRAMs and graphics memory, is slated to be $2.8 billion, a 65% increase from last year. System LSI capex is set at $700 million without the potential additional investment for the S1 Line, up from $170 million last year. The TFT-LCD capex this year is forecast to be $764 million, down from $850 million in 2002. Tom Quinn, vice president of marketing, said memory chip capex would be used to complete the Line 12 300-mm wafer fab in Hwasung, as well as to further Samsung's transition to 0.11-nanometer and 0.10-nanometer processing. He said the Korean firm expects a 50% increase in bit rate production this year, At present 75% of all memory output is at 0.13-micron or below processing. Dennis Kim, vice president of marketing for System LSI, said Samsung will begin equipping the S1 Line in the second half of this year with initial production slated in 1H '04. It will be a 300-mm wafer line using 90nm processing from the beginning, he added. He said the System LSI unit had $1.8 billion in revenue for 2002, up from $1.4 billion for the previous year. Joseph Virginia, vice president of the TFT-LCD group, said the bulk of capex this year will be for equipment to increase yields on the present Generation 5 Line 5 fab in Cheonan. "We expect to ramp up to 100K substrates a month by July," he said. Samsung has announced a new LCD Line 6, but Virginia said no decision has been made yet what size motherglass will be produced. Total TFT-LCD sales in 2002 were $3.3 billion, including both captive in-house and external shipments, he said. Some 49% of panel revenue sales came from flat panel monitors and 42% of revenue came from notebook PC panels, he added. Samsung Electronics also reported net income for 2002 of $5.98 billion, a 160% increase over the 2001 net profits. Sales for last year totaled $34.39 billion, up 25% from 2001. Fourth quarter operating income was $1.27 billion on sales of $9.08 billion. The fourth quarter net income was not immediately available, nor did Samsung provide a comparison with the previous quarter or year-ago period. A breakdown by business segments showed that the semiconductor and LCD group had operating income for 2002 of $3.24 billion on sales of $10.87 billion. The telecommunication networks group had operating income for the year of $2.53 billion on sales of $10.52 billion. The digital media unit had operating income of $327 million on sales of $8.44 billion, and the digital appliances unit income of $109 million on sales of $3.15 billion. The operating income of digital media and digital appliance groups were negatively affected by unidentified one-time expenses, such as special marketing outlays, the firm said. Samsung said its memory chip business was profitable even though so many competitors lost money last year. "Samsung had a greater focus than other companies on specialty devices that commanded high prices. Also there was steady growth in demand for flash memory," it claimed. The firm said its loans at the end of 2002 were $915 million lower than at the close of the previous year. The debt-to-equity ratio was in negative range at minus 24%.