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Technology Stocks : Semi Equipment Analysis -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: StanX Long who wrote (13325)	2/12/2004 10:46:26 PM
From: StanX Long	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 95761

ChipMOS reports revenues and gross margin rose in 4Q Press release; Jack Lu, DigiTimes.com Thursday 12 February 2004 ChipMOS Technologies yesterday announced strong consolidated revenue and gross margin growth in the fourth quarter of 2003 following a 20-25% rise in LCD driver IC assembly and testing prices in October. Compared to the previous quarter, revenues rose 1.9% to NT$2.484 billion while gross margins jumped eight percentage points to 28% in the fourth quarter. For the year, the company enjoyed net profits of NT$418 million, or NT$7.1 per share, on 37% revenue growth to a record NT$8.956 billion. The company had posted a net loss of NT$970 million, or NT$16.49 per share, in 2002. Investments in back-end or back-end related companies in the last two years have begun to pay off, according to company deputy chairman and CEO S.J. Cheng. In LCD driver IC assembly and testing, demand for COF (chip on film) packaging has been particularly strong and accounted for 12% of ChipMOS’s deliveries of the product in December, the company said in a press release. COF packaging carries a higher margin than TCP (tape carrier package), the other main technology ChipMOS uses for the product. ChipMOS plans to expand the capacity of its LCD driver IC operation to 32 million units per month by the end of the second quarter. The company has allocated more capacity to assembly and testing for flash memory in line with rising demand from IDMs, while demand for SRAM and DRAM has remained flat. ChipMOS expects improved gross margins from its Shanghai operation following an increase in capacity to six million units per month before the end of December. It said it plans to further expand capacity for LCD driver ICs and memory.