Taiwan's UMC posts Q4 profit of 137 million dollars

Taiwan's United Microelectronics Corp Wednesday said it posted a net profit of 4.4 billion Taiwan dollars (137 million US dollars) in the three months to December due to strong demand.

Although profits were down from the previous quarter, the company said it would possibly treble its capital expenditure in 2010 due to expectations of growing demand.

The profit compared with a loss of 23.5 billion Taiwan dollars in the fourth quarter of the previous year, the world's second biggest contract microchip manufacturer said in a statement.

But the fourth quarter profit marked a decline of 27.8 percent compared with the 6.09 billion Taiwan dollars profit in the previous quarter.

Nobunaga Chai, a semiconductor analyst at Digitimes, attributed the decline to "the fall in shipment of advanced high price products."

The company expects capital expenditure for this year to be in a range of 1.2-1.5 billion US dollars, up from 500 million US dollars last year.

In the fourth quarter, earnings per share came in at 0.35 Taiwan dollars, recovering from a loss of 1.81 Taiwan dollars a year earlier, it said.

Revenues rose to 27.75 billion Taiwan dollars in the fourth quarter, up from 18.54 billion dollars the previous year.