UMC (Hsinchu, Taiwan) announced it would increase its capital expenditures for 2010 to be between $1.2 billion and $1.5 billion to accommodate strong demand from customers at advanced technology nodes. The company said it spent about $551 million on capital expenditures in 2009.

Fourth quarter sales were up 1.2 percent compared with the third quarter and up nearly 50 percent from the fourth quarter of 2008, UMC said. But net income declined nearly 28 percent sequentially. But the net income was an improvement compared to a net loss of NT$23.5 billion ($734.9 million) for the fourth quarter of 2008, UMC said.

For full year 2009, UMC reported sales of NT$88.6 billion ($2.8 billion), down 4 percent compared with 2008, the company said. UMC posted a net income for the year of NT$3.9 billion ($121.9 billion), compared with a net loss in 2008, UMC said.

UMC derived 13 percent of its revenue from 65-nm wafers in 2009, the company said. In the fourth quarter, 17 percent of revenue came from 65-nm and below.

The percentage of revenue from the North America region increased to 51 percent in the fourth quarter, mainly due to continuing strong demand from advanced technology node products, UMC said. Percent of revenue from fabless customers increased slightly to 80 percent in the fourth quarter from 79 percent in the third quarter, UMC said.

UMC's capacity utilization rate decreased to 86 percent in the fourth quarter, down from 89 percent in the third quarter, the company said.

For the first quarter of 2010, UMC said it expects wafer shipments to be roughly flat and for wafer average selling prices to decrease by less than 3 percent. The company expects first quarter capacity utilization to be in the mid 80s, it said.

Last week, UMC's larger rival, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Ltd. reported a net income of NT$32.67 billion (about $1.02 billion) on consolidated revenue of NT$92.09 billion (about $2.88 billion) for the fourth quarter of 2009.

By: DocMemory
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