Revenues in Q4 stood at $395.3 million, up by 1% compared to last quarter. Of this, communications chip manufacturing share was estimated at about $197 million. The chips were mainly made for the 3G handsets for various vendors.
SMIC also curtailed the DRAM foundry services and by the end of the year had cut the shipments by 22%. With the result the revenue from DRAM business was just 16.7% in the quarter compared to 23.6% in the third quarter. However the non-DRAM business grew by 13.5% in the quarter.
The total number of new customers reached 77 in the fourth quarter.
The company posted a net loss of $21.2 million which was reduced by 17% q-o-q. Wafer shipments were up by 8.5% compared to the last quarter - of which 90nm consisted of the most. By the end of the quarter, the production capacity of the foundry had reached 185,250 (8” equivalent wafers) a month with utilization rates of 94%.
During the quarter SMIC signed an agreement with IBM licensing IBM’s 45nm CMOS technology. It also announced a new plant at Shenzhen for 8”, 12” wafers to be managed by a wholly owned subsidiary SMIC Shenzhen Corporation Limited.