Wednesday, January 22, 2003
Infineon Technologies AG said its fiscal first quarter net loss narrowed sharply from the year-ago quarter on higher memory product demand, lower production costs and continued strength in the automotive and industrial IC segment.
While seeing improvements in several segments of its operations, especially the key DRAM sector, the German semiconductor company believes the best it can still hope for through the first half of 2003 is stable demand since several market segments remain weak and susceptible to continued pricing pressures.
Infineon said it lost $42.7 million, or 6 cents per share, in the three months ended Dec. 31, much smaller than the $352 million loss it posted in the year-ago quarter and the $539.6 million loss reported in the immediately preceding quarter.
The company's revenue rose 47%, to $1.62 billion, from $1.1 billion in the quarter ended Dec. 31, 2001, and up 10% from the third quarter of calendar 2002.
Sales in the DRAM unit rose to $578 million, up 89% from the year-ago quarter while the unit reported profit before interest and taxes of $31 million compared with a net loss before interest and taxes of $400 million in the year-ago quarter.
"We improved our revenue performance sequentially and year-on-year and achieved profitability in our memory products group by improved pricing, product mix and by significantly reducing the fully loaded costs of our memory chips," said Ulrich Schumacher, president and chief executive of Infineon, in a statement.
Infineon said it expects only a slight increase in memory product demand during the ongoing quarter and sees pricing pressure persisting in the wireline communications and mobile solutions segments through the first half of 2003.
The Munich-based company said it expects its automotive semiconductor business to continue to gain market share and sees the strongest sales growth in its power semiconductor and power management unit.
By: DocMemory
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