Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp. (Shanghai, China) has announced record revenue for the second quarter and its ninth profitable quarter in sequence. In addition sales into China has reason to be largest of call regions and was responsible for 44 percent of SMICs sales in the quarter.
The revenue for the quarter, excluding shipments from Wuhan Xinxin was $511.3 million an increase of 13.4 percent sequentially and 1.9 percent year over year compared to $501.8 million in 2Q13. The profit attributable to SMIC was $56.8 million compared with $20.3 million in 1Q14.
China-region revenue grew to 44.4 percent of overall revenue becoming the largest contributor to revenue regionally in 2Q14.
The rapid expansion in profit was partly attributed to strong Chinese demand and in increase in manufacturing capacity utilization, which was up 10 percentage points compared with the previous quarter.
The company is introducing 28nm CMOS in both Poly SiON and HKMG formats in 300mm wafer fabs and also has high-voltage power management IC production capability, CMOS image sensor processes, embedded non-volatile memory other sensor processes available on 200mm-diameter wafers. SMIC has been working with Qualcomm to bring up its 28nm production capability (see Qualcomm, SMIC Partner for 28nm Snapdragon Production).
"One of our growth drivers for 2015 will be 28nm. We are happy to work with our long-time customer as we ramp up this new technology. We are on track to have production ramp up in 2015. We are also working with other customers who are targeting to capture the LTE handset IC market in China, AP [application processors] for tablets, and RF applications on 28nm," said Tzu-Yin Chiu, SMIC's CEO, in a statement.
"Our other growth driver for this year and more so in 2015 is our differentiated product offering. SMIC continues to experience high demand for 8-inch production capacity for PMIC, CIS, e-NVM, and sensors. Our effort in 12-inch specialty process development has recently yielded the industry's leading 55nm embedded NVM solution. Our customer has entered into high volume production based on this technology," he added.
SMIC expects sales to increase in 3Q14 by between 1 and 5 percent.
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Qualcomm, SMIC Partner for 28nm Snapdragon Production
