For the second quarter ending March 31, the Munich, Germany-based company reported a net loss of 328m euros ($359.4m), compared to a net loss of 108m euros ($118.3m), on revenue of 1.48bn euros ($1.62bn), up 13% from 1.31bn euros ($1.43bn) in the year-ago quarter.
For the six-month period, it reported a net loss of 368m euros ($403.3m), compared with a net loss of 439m euros ($481.1m), on revenue up 28% at 2.93bn euros ($3.20bn), from 2.28bn euros ($2.50bn) for the same period last year.
We achieved very good revenue growth and gained further market share in a continued difficult market environment, said Dr Ulrich Schumacher, president and CEO of Infineon. We increased our productivity significantly, however we could not compensate for the dramatic price decline for memory products.
Infineon is Europe’s second largest chipmaker after STMicroelectronics NV, and computer memory is its biggest business, although it also makes chips for mobile phones, cars, as well as chips for smart cards. At the moment, its only profitable division is its automotive and industrial arm. The company blamed its increased net loss on the strong decline in prices for DDR (double-data rate) memory chips, as well as continued pricing pressure in most segments. For example, a rough comparison for a key Infineon product – a 256MB DDR computer chip – shows that prices fell by about 50% from $6 at the beginning of January, to about $3 during the quarter, although they did recover slightly by the end of the quarter.
However, the company’s results fell short of analyst expectations that had forecast an average net loss for the quarter of approximately 137m euros ($150.6m), and sales of roughly 1.43bn euros ($1.57bn).
Source: Computerwire
