Chartered Semiconductor Manufacturing is the latest chip foundry to be slightly more upbeat about the market looking forward.
“Compared to our expectation in April, we are seeing incremental improvement in our business, mainly coming from our mature technologies," said George Thomas, senior vice president & CFO of Chartered.
The foundry has revised its revenue guidance upward.
"Based on the mid-point of our revised guidance for revenues including our share of SMP revenues, wafer shipments are now expected to increase approximately 60% compared to first quarter of 2009. In line with higher revenues, we expect net loss to improve approximately $10m compared to our previous guidance,” said Thomas.
The silicon foundry industry was the first segment of the semiconductor industry to call an upturn. First TSMC, then UMC, Chartered and SMIC announced that Q209 revenues would show big gains on Q1.
That came after three quarters of contraction. Now, analysts iSuppli, have come out with a report saying that Q2 foundry revenues will rise to $3.6bn, up 59.3% from the $2.2bn revenues of Q1.
Chartered plans to release its second quarter 2009 results on July 24.