EETimes reports an analyst has reduced his quarter-on-quarter growth expectations for wafer shipments from 7% to 5%. Apparently large customers have cut their orders. EETimes writes:
A bad sign for the industry? An investment banking firm has cut both its third- and fourth-quarter estimates for Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Ltd. (TSMC).
Mehdi Hosseini, an analyst with Friedman Billings Ramsey & Co. Inc. (FBR), cut his forecast due to lower-than-expected demand from TSMC's foundry customers. It also means that the overall chip industry could be slowing in the second half of 2008.
''Recent checks suggest to us that overall wafer shipments in 3Q could be up only 5 percent quarter-over-quarter, below previous expectations of up 7 percent to 8 percent quarter-over-quarter,'' he said in a report. ''This is attributed to cuts in shipment by key/large customers from the communication (Marvell, Qualcomm, TI), graphics, and consumer sectors.''
There is more bad news. ''Additionally, we believe that forecasts for 4Q wafer shipments have recently been cut, with customers from the consumer end markets (particularly game console, digital imaging, set-top box, DVD, FPD) and communications (Bluetooth) having the largest cutbacks,'' he said.
''Thus, we now expect 4Q wafer shipment to decline by as much as 8 percent to 10 percent quarter over quarter, below previous expectations of down 4 percent to 5 percent quarter over quarter,'' he said. ''Our current read on 1Q '09 wafer shipments suggests below seasonal shipment decline of 5 percent to 10 percent quarter over quarter, though we note that it is too early to make an accurate assessment of the 1Q '09 demand environment.''
FBR is cutting its calendar 2008 and 2009 revenue estimates from $11.726 billion and $12.447 billion, respectively, to $11.545 billion and $11.661 billion, respectively. Its EPS estimates have changed from $0.75 and $0.78 to $0.74 and $0.73.
This is indeed a bad sign for the industry and indicative of the current issues facing the semiconductor industry globally and the semiconductor value chain here in Taiwan. Despite this bad news, some companies have been optimistic,especially design houses (see Record Sales for IC Design Houses). Yesterday we wrote TSMC was diversifying into the MEMS industry. One of the reasons for this diversification is that this sector has a faster than average growth rate than other semiconductor sectors.
Despite this seemingly bad news (negative perception) TSMC shares traded higher (for most of the day) on the Taiwan stock exchange. At the time of writing the shares were 0.17% higher.
No comments:
Post a Comment