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.