(Taipei News) Winbond Electronics Corporation, a leading supplier of semiconductor solutions, today announced the results of its Board of Directors meeting held on April 29, 2005. The Company approved audited financial statements for the first quarter 2005. Net Sales totaled NT $5.509 billion, a decrease of approximately 31 percent when compared with NT $7.980 billion over the same period last year. Gross profit from operations totaled NT $525 million. Net loss after taxes was NT $1.653 billion; net loss per share was NT $0.40.
Due to the decrease of worldwide PC shipment, the drop of Commodity DRAM ASP (Average Sales Price) and the seasonality to the consumer electronics market in the first quarter, the revenue and the profit drop. In addition, NT $621 million of R&D expenses used for ACT1, which is the jointly development project with Sharp Corporation was recorded. The operating loss was NT $1.594 billion. As to the non-operating income and expenses, higher inventory loss from price erosion and slow moving of Memory products were compensated by higher investment gain from disposal of TSMC shares.
In terms of Memory Products, the drop rate of Winbond's Commodity DRAM price is much lower than that of spot price of Commodity DRAM in the market in the first quarter. This is due to the fact that the "profit-and ĄVloss- sharing" scheme with Infineon for Commodity DRAM shipped to them. This reduced the impacts from adverse pricing environment. However, decrease in PSRAM shipment and soft pricing environment caused the DRAM sales drop. In terms of Flash products, ASP of low-density Flash also dropped given the sever competition cause the sales drop.
In terms of Logic Products, the micron C-based consumer ICs and TFT-LCD driver ICs were nearly offset by decrease in revenue of motherboard related I/O ICs. Therefore, the revenue of Logic business was flat.
In addition, by acquiring the intellectual property and assets Winbond believes that it can accelerate its delivery of high-end mixed signal, I/O and advanced system solutions (e.g. networking security) for Notebook and Server markets. Through this acquisition, the Company expects to see synergy among its original products (I/Os for desktop) and the products (notebook and server I/Os) owned by National Semiconductor. The Company believes following the completion of the transition period, it can deliver the whole range of products and can provide the customers for one-stop shopping, which further solidifies its customer range. Revenue contribution will be starting from May after the close of the acquisition process.
Looking forward to the second quarter, the PSRAM orders from our customers has come back starting from the mid of March. The Company believes the process of inventory adjustment is about to be the end and will gradually allocate more capacity into this product for the ahead quarters. Moreover, the Company continues to promote image processing Backend IC and polyphonic ringing-tone IC both designed for handsets. However, low visibility on TFT-LCD driver IC business at this moment. As a whole, the financial performance of the second quarter is expected to be better than the first quarter.
Spokesperson
Wilson Wen
Vice President of Administrative Center
Tel：03-5792755
News Liaison
Mike Liu
Deputy Director
Tel：03-5792516
Email：ckliu@winbond.com