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

To: matt dillabough who wrote (17444)	1/25/2006 8:38:51 AM
From: Proud_Infidel	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 25522

Elpida returns to profitability Yoshiko Hara EE Times (01/24/2006 5:19 PM EST) TOKYO — After two sequential quarterly losses, Elpida Memory Inc. returned to the black in its December-ended fiscal third quarter, though its operating profit came it at only one-fifth the company's earlier guidance. Elpida, which met its sales forecast for the quarter, pinned the lower-than-expected results in part on price erosion for commodity DRAMs. Sales for the quarter came in at ¥59 billion (about $513 million). Operating profit was ¥645 million (about $5.6 million). "The price of 512-Mbit double-data-rate DRAMs dropped sharply, by 25 percent, during the quarter, which had a big impact on profit," said Elpida chief operating officer Shuichi Otsuka. Spot prices slid as a shortage of PC chip sets left companies with DRAMs on the shelf, Otsuka said. But chip set supply is recovering, and some memory vendors are shifting production from DRAMs to NAND flash memories, bringing DRAM supply and demand back into balance. The company reported that prices had bounced back above the $5 level as of Jan. 22. Output from a newly opened 300-mm line has aided the company's return to profitability, "giving us cost competitiveness," Otsuka said. Operations at the E300 Area 2 fab began in October and brought Elpida's total 300-mm capacity to 50,000 wafers a month by December. Full operation at the new fab by the end of this month is expected to bring total monthly 300-mm production to 54,000 wafers. About 45 percent of the total wafer output in December was used for 90-nanometer production, the company said. Devices on 90-nm processes are expected to account for 60 percent of output by the end of March. In announcing the third-quarter results, president and CEO Yukio Sakamoto predicted 5 to 10 percent growth for the DRAM market over the next year, spurred by rising end-product demand as a result of the Olympics and other events.