WW DRAM Revenue increases 27.1% in 2Q09, says DRAMeXchange

Taipei, August 4th, 2009 --- According to DRAMeXchange, with the production cut effect in DRAM contract price, PC system vendors continue to replenish their DRAM inventory under the low pricing status and resulted in the 23% growth contract price in 2Q09. Given the tight supply, spot price also hikes that DDR2 1Gb 667MHz chip spot price once reached US$1.27 in May and it was anticipated to reach US$1.5 by the quarter end. However, it is said that a certain DRAM vendor released the low price chip to spot market that trigger the price fallen to the rage of US$1.05~US$1.19. Average price for DDR2 1Gb 667 MHz rose 27% to US$1.12 in 2Q09.

2Q09 DRAM revenue rose about 10%~50% given the 23% growth contract price and 27% growth spot price. Samsung and Elpida have outperformed the market and increase 3% to their market share. Compared with the overall industry revenue in 1Q09, DRAM revenue for 2Q09 rose 27.1% to US$4,043M in 2Q09.

WW Own Brand Revenue Ranking for DRAM vendors

According to DRAMeXchange, 2Q09 DRAM revenue increase 27.1%. Samsung continued its unchallenged leadership in the DRAM industry with US$1,179M DRAM revenue in 2Q09 while market share has climbed 2.8% to 29.2% given the upward pricing trend in contract price, technology migration and raise DDR3 portion. 2Q09 Hynix DRAM sales rose 31.5% to US$ 928M given the 20% average price growth, 10% quarterly bit growth and dropping unit cost. Currently Hynix ranks as 2nd place and its market share has been increased 0.7% to 22.9%.

Elpida recorded the dramatically 50.1% sales increase and strengthen its 3rd market leading position to surpass Micron given the 27% ASP growth and 12% bit growth. For the different accounting period (2Q for Micron is March, April and May) it applied for the accounting periods, contract price still decline 2% compared with last periods (Dec., Jan. and Feb.). According to DRAMeXchange, DDR2 1Gb 667MHz contract price was merely US$0.88 in March while the contract price increased to US$1.16 in June that the revenue upward pattern is less than other vendors’. Therefore, Micron would grab 4th place in the ranking while market share has declined to 13.6% in 2Q09 from15.2% in 1Q09.

As for Taiwanese vendors, Nanya ranks 5th post along with US$230M DRAM revenue and 34.5% QoQ given the upward pricing trend in both spot market & contract market and peaking utilization rate of outsourcing partner-Inotera. Benefited from the 27% boosting spot price and 42% utilization rate from 25%, PSC shows the amazing 38.1% revenue growth in 2Q09 and market share has slightly increased. Winbond announced its 2Q09 DRAM revenue in US$80m with merely 8.6%QoQ. The market share has been declined to 2% since growth momentum is comparably weaker than the market. ProMOS also demonstrates the 20.9%QoQ revenue pattern with the upward pricing trend as well.

Figure-1 2Q09 WW DRAM revenue ranking, by own brand DRAM revenue
(Company revenue includes outsourced portion and excludes the sub-manufacturing revenue)

*Qimonda did not announce any financial results in 2Q09 under the stage of bankruptcy.
Unit: Million USD
Source: DRAMeXchange, Aug. 2009.

Note:
Figure-1: For Samsung 2Q DRAM revenue , we approximately derived the resulted by deducting LSI revenue from semiconductor based on the assumption that DRAM revenue accounts for 48.3% in memory sectors and 2Q09 average exchange rate is US$1 against KRW$1,283. We apply this estimation to other vendors by indicating 71% for Hynix total revenue, 49.8% for Micron. 89% for PSC, 90% for ProMOS, 94% for Nanya and 80% for Winbond under the following exchange rate: US$1 against NT$33.09, US$1 against JPY$97.41.

Own Brand Market Share of WW DRAM Industry (By country)

The Korean vendor’s share rose 3.5% to 53.4% compared with 1Q09 and their leader position remained unchallenged in 2Q09 while shares from Taiwanese vendors slightly rose to 13.8% in 2Q09 from 13.5% in 1Q09. The rest of market share is occupied by Japanese vendors(18.9%) and American ones(13.9%). (Figure-2)

Figure-2 The market share of own brand DRAM revenue, by country



Note: the calculation of market share does not include the "others" item
Source: DRAMeXchange, Aug. 2009.