Wennerstrom Semi Equipment Analysis Message Board

Sponsor

To: Sam who wrote (54404)	10/26/2011 6:47:07 PM
From: Cary Salsberg	1 Recommendation of 59938

RE: "UMC said it expects fourth quarter wafer shipments to decline about 10 percent compared with the third quarter. The company said it expects wafer average selling prices to increase by about 5 percent in the fourth quarter. UMC also expects capacity utilization to further decline to around 65 to 69 percent. That seems incongruous to me--shipments and utilization to decline but prices go up?" First, I believe "average selling prices" refer to finished wafers, referred to as "wafer shipments". When shipments decline along with capacity utilization, usually, it is older generations of chips that are most affected, not the leading edge chips. Leading edge chips have higher average selling prices and they will be a bigger percentage of "wafer shipments".