[News] PSMC’s Q1 Loss Narrows, while Q2 Shipments Impacted by Earthquake, Down 5%-8%

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The Taiwanese semiconductor foundry Powerchip Semiconductor Manufacturing Corporation (PSMC) has held its earnings call and released its Q1 financial report. According to a report from Liberty Times Net citing information, with increasing capacity utilization, idle capacity costs decreased, boosting gross margin to 15.4%, up 12.3 percentage points from the previous year’s Q4. The net loss narrowed to NTD 439 million after tax, translating to a loss of NTD 0.11 per share.

Looking ahead to a potential turnaround this year, PSMC’s General Manager, Brian Shieh, highlighted that while large-size panel driver ICs are performing relatively well, Chinese foundries are exerting significant pricing pressure on mature processes, impacting average selling prices unfavorably. This remains a key variable affecting profitability.

In response to inflation-driven equipment cost adjustments and market demands, PSMC is revising its product portfolio. They also announced an increased capital expenditure of NTD 32 billion for 2024, which represents a 30% increase from the previously disclosed amount of NTD 24 billion. Powerchip’s Tainan fab has initiated trial production, with future investments focusing on power management IC, memory, and copper processes in the interposer.

Brian Shieh mentioned that PSMC’s capacity utilization rate was around 65% in the fourth quarter of last year. In the first quarter of this year, the utilization rate for logic products improved slightly, while memory product utilization reached 95% to 98%.

He expects memory product utilization to remain at first-quarter levels in the second quarter, with logic product utilization around 65% to 70%. Overall gross margin is anticipated to remain stable or improve compared to the first quarter.

According to TrendForce’s previous report on the fourth quarter of 2023, global semiconductor foundry revenue rankings showed that Intel Foundry Services (IFS), which ranked ninth globally in the third quarter of 2023, was pushed out of the top ten by PSMC and Nexchip due to factors such as the transition between old and new CPU generations and lackluster inventory momentum. At the same time, the top three semiconductor foundries globally were TSMC, Samsung, and GlobalFoundries.

Read more

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(Photo credit: PSMC)