UMS Holdings

[desmondxyz]

CEO buys more shares?

Anyone?

Negative. Just share transfer...right hand change to left hand....he didn't add any stake....

[Boon]

Economic recovery and pervasive computing to propel semiconductor manufacturing supply chain

14-Jan-2014

Macroeconomic and microelectronic industry growth opportunities and innovation challenges underscored diverse perspectives from analysts, economists, technologists, semiconductor manufacturers and supply chain executives speaking at the SEMI Industry Strategy Symposium (ISS) that opened yesterday. The executive conference offers the year’s first strategic outlook for the global microelectronics manufacturing industry and offered encouraging forecasts buttressed by the silicon requirements for the pervasive computing era.

Opening keynoter Rick Wallace, president and CEO of KLA-Tencor, invoked Robert Frost prose on the “The Road Not Taken” to illustrate competing industry views about growth. Wallace contrasted consolidation-driven industry mergers to what he characterized as more agile productivity-oriented innovation growth. He rejected dual-source strategies as the optimal path for the industry and its supply chain and called for industry to make a more convincing appeal to young talent. In a provocative differentiation from competitors, Wallace questioned whether “too big to fail is also too big to innovate.”

Robert C. Fry, senior economist at Dupont, pointed to low but persistent global economic growth and highlighted positive data for global industrial production. He forecast global GDP growth of 3.1 percent in 2014 — up from 2.4 percent in 2013. Moreover, he commented on the increasing correlation between global GDP and semiconductor output, with high tech once again growing faster than the economy. Fry stated that global leading indexes are trending up, but not strongly or universally. Semiconductor shipments are finally setting new highs again and semi shipments have been trending up for more than a year.

Bill McClean, president of IC Insights, also pointed to better GDP growth trends, from 2.1 percent (2008-2012) to a forecast of 3.4 percent growth for 2014. Noting the trend toward mobility, he said that 2014 will be the first year that communications IC spending surpassed computing IC spending. He forecast 7 percent semiconductor market growth in 2014 to $350.7 billion and called for capital equipment spending of $62.3 billion, 9 percent higher than 2013 ($57.2 billion).

Bob Johnson, research VP at Gartner, stated that in the short term, growth will return to equipment markets in 2014 with annual growth between 16 and 21 percent. He expects quarterly weakness in the first half of 2014 after a strong fourth quarter in 2013. Longer term, he sees foundries battling IDMs for supremacy in mobility markets, technology shifts on the horizon with the advent of 3D NAND and EUV, and 450mm implementation beginning by end of 2017. Also, Johnson said that by 2017, the dominant semiconductor revenue opportunity in the “Internet of Things” will shift from infrastructure to the “Things,” and that the challenge will be in how to bring thousands of new products to market rapidly and cheaply.

Mark Thirsk, managing partner at Linx Consulting, discussed chemicals and materials needed for advanced semiconductor devices and forecast an improved outlook for 2014 with strong Q2 and Q3. A high upside potential remains in specialty materials for semiconductors, but significant R&D requirements remain a barrier. Materials demand grows faster than semiconductor unit growth due to process complexity — with Patterning, CVD and ALD, and CMP all driving materials demand growth. For the next 3-5 years, 3D packaging and TSV processing are key areas.

In the next SEMI Industry Strategy Symposium session, presenters spoke of both the challenges and opportunities inherent in Pervasive Computing. Nick Yu, senior VP at Qualcomm, discussed the unprecedented opportunity that the mobile era offers. Yu stated that what consumers want is a digital “6th sense,” basically the “augmentation of human ability.” The smartphone experience is also becoming the expectation in other device categories. Lama Nachman, principal engineer at Intel Labs, continued this thought with a presentation on “Context is Everything,” stating that Intel wants to fundamentally transform the relationship between humans and computers with “context” — for communication, introspection, meetings, health, and more. She said that the platform implications of context include: “always-on” sensing and computing, low-power sensors and I/O, effective workload partitioning, and security and privacy.

Dale Ford, VP and chief analyst at IHS, stated that the semiconductor market growth continues its cyclicality, with September 2012 beginning a new cycle that will peak in the second half of 2014. Ford said that capital expenditures declined by 9 percent in 2012 and an additional 3.7 percent in 2013, with Intel and Samsung transitioning existing capacity for use on next-generation technology. Pablo Temprano, senior director at Samsung Semiconductor, also stressed that a transformation is in progress. Discussing memory growth and investment in the mobile era, he said that Mobile is driving the Cloud (2013 Capex at $10 billion for just top 4: Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook). The total memory Capex Consensus forecast is $16 billion for 2014.

Finally, Rod Morgan, VP at Micron Technology, said that an increasingly connected lifestyle is driving memory requirements with mobile multi-functional devices, with embedded sensors and significantly greater memory consumption. Fast growing memory in a highly interconnected world demand is split across multiple sub-segments. The $16.4 billion mobile memory segment is a portion of the overall memory market (RAM $31.0 billion; Flash $26.6 billion). Citing the reliability, technology and security requirements of these embedded mobile device microelectronics, Morgan called for greater supply chain collaboration to enable the network infrastructure be successful. He said, “The pace at which we enable the infrastructure will determine the speed of innovation.”

Conference speakers on Day 2 and Day 3 of ISS will discuss how these and other mega-trends are enablers for future growth in Pervasive Computing.

The SEMI Industry Strategy Symposium (ISS) examines global economic, technology, market, business and geo-political developments influencing the semiconductor processing industry along with their implications for your strategic business decisions. For more than 35 years, ISS has been the bellwether semiconductor conference for senior executives to acquire the latest trend data, technology highlights and industry perspective to support business decisions, customer strategies and the pursuit of greater profitability. For information on SEMI, visit: www.semi.org.

http://electroiq.com/blog/2014/01/econom...ply-chain/

(vested)

[Boon]

TSMC mobile chip sales to grow more than 35% in 2014, says Morris Chang

Jessie Shen, DIGITIMES, Taipei [Friday 17 January 2014]

TSMC's revenues generated from the mobile device sector are expected to increase more than 35% in 2014, buoyed by the rising popularity of smartphones and tablets, and rising silicon content per device, said company chairman Morris Chang at a January 15 investors meeting.

Mobile devices that incorporate 64-bit processors and come with support for multi-mode networks will become widely available in 2014, said Chang. Meanwhile, more devices will include MEMS and NFC, feature new standards in Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, and have fingerprint recognition capabilities. The continued performance improvements and feature enhancements will boost the amount of silicon inside a system, Chang indicated.

Mobile products will be the key growth engine for TSMC in 2014, when the company expects to post double-digit revenue growth, Chang noted. In terms of technology, TSMC's 20nm SoC and 28nm HKMG process nodes will fuel the company's growth in 2014, Chang said.

Also at the investors meeting, TSMC co-CEO CC Wei disclosed that shipments of 20nm process technology will reach about 10% of the company's total wafer sales in 2014. The foundry has moved the node to volume production in the first quarter.

As for TSMC's 16nm FinFET process, the node will be ready for mass production in 2015, company co-CEO Mark Liu indicated.

http://www.digitimes.com/news/a20140117VL200.html

(vested)

[Nick]

Kim Eng has released an unrated report titled 'Cream of the Dividend Crop':

http://research.maybank-ib.com/pdf/docum...4_5643.pdf [Report]

(Vested)

[valuebuddies]

touching 60c mark first time in the last 2 years.

[valuebuddies]

Kim Eng has released an unrated report titled 'Cream of the Dividend Crop':

http://research.maybank-ib.com/pdf/docum...4_5643.pdf [Report]

(Vested)

What? Target price: na ?

[mulyc]

UMS Holdings - Cream of the dividend crop (Not Rated, UMSH SP, Technology)

Created By: Samuel Kung on 01/20/2014at 10:03 AM
Category: Technology
Country: Singapore


We like UMS for its high dividend per share (2013 YTD: 3 cents, 2010-12: 5 cents, with a special dividend of 1 cent in 2010-11). If there is a special dividend in FY13 as well, yield will exceed 10% at the current share price. Net margins already exceed 20% even with low utilisation rate of 60-70%.

[Boon]

The December three-month average bookings were at the highest level since June 2012 — a positive sign for the 2014 spending outlook.”
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
North American Semiconductor Equipment Industry Posts December 2013 Book-to-Bill Ratio of 1.02

SAN JOSE, Calif. — January 23, 2014 — North America-based manufacturers of semiconductor equipment posted $1.38 billion in orders worldwide in December 2013 (three-month average basis) and a book-to-bill ratio of 1.02, according to the December EMDS Book-to-Bill Report published today by SEMI. A book-to-bill of 1.02 means that $102 worth of orders were received for every $100 of product billed for the month.

The three-month average of worldwide bookings in December 2013 was $1.38 billion. The bookings figure is 11.1 percent higher than the final November 2013 level of $1.24 billion, and is 48.3 percent higher than the December 2012 order level of $927.4 million.

The three-month average of worldwide billings in December 2013 was $1.35 billion. The billings figure is 20.8 percent higher than the final November 2013 level of $1.11 billion, and is 33.8 percent higher than the December 2012 billings level of $1.0 billion.

“Through the final quarter of 2013, both bookings and billings continually improved,” said Denny McGuirk, president and CEO of SEMI. "The December three-month average bookings were at the highest level since June 2012 — a positive sign for the 2014 spending outlook.” ....................................................................................

http://www.semi.org/en/node/48651?id=highlights

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Applied Materials: Ready For Upstream Cyclical Trend
Jan. 23, 2014

http://seekingalpha.com/article/1961671-...e_readmore

(vested)

[BlueKelah]

Historically the period of increase spending will often change to decrease spending in a few months, and looks like this few months the Book to Bill ratio is really high.

No matter I guess, for UMS its still profits all the way.

v-vested-v

[Boon]

2014 Outlook: An era of unprecedented change

24Jan2014

Compiled by Pete Singer, Editor-in-Chief; Edited by Shannon Davis, Web Editor

We asked leading industry experts and analysts to give us their perspectives on what we can expect in 2014. All expect it to be a banner year for the semiconductor industry, as the world’s demand for electronics continues unabated. However, most believe we are seeing an era of unprecedented change, driven by a shift to mobile computing, the Internet of Things, higher wafer costs and difficult technical challenges. To address these challenges, new levels of innovation and collaboration will be needed.

http://electroiq.com/blog/2014/01/2014-o...ed-change/
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Cyclical upturn continues in 2014: Positive yet cautious expectations persist

Bill McClean, President, IC Insights

http://electroiq.com/blog/2013/01/cyclic...s-persist/

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Outlook for semiconductors and the value chain in 2014

Mike Corbett, Linx Consulting and Duncan Meldrum, Hilltop Economics

http://electroiq.com/blog/2013/01/outloo...n-in-2014/

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Coming year promises increased capital spending and continued need for effective industry collaboration

Denny McGuirk, president and CEO, SEMI

http://electroiq.com/blog/2013/01/coming...aboration/

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The shift to materials-enabled 3D

Randhir Thakur, Executive Vice President, General Manager, Silicon Systems Group, Applied Materials, Inc

http://electroiq.com/blog/2013/01/the-sh...nabled-3d/

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Innovation and collaboration key in 2014

Joe Cestari, President, Total Facility Solutions

http://electroiq.com/blog/2013/01/innova...y-in-2014/

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Can we keep on benefiting from Moore’s Law?

Ludo Deferm, Executive Vice President, imec, Leuven, Belgium

http://electroiq.com/blog/2013/01/can-we...oores-law/

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Key market and technology trends in the sub-20nm era

Rich Goldman, Vice President, Corporate Marketing and Strategic Alliances, Synopsys

http://electroiq.com/blog/2013/01/key-ma...-20nm-era/

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

2014 outlook: MEMS on the rise

Tony McKie, CEO, memsstar, Ltd.

http://electroiq.com/blog/2013/01/2014-o...-the-rise/

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Challenges and innovations on front-end and 3D TSV

Frederic Raynal, CTO, Alchimer

http://electroiq.com/blog/2013/01/challe...nd-3d-tsv/

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Keys to success: Testing in the New Mobile World

Michel Villemain, CEO, Presto Engineering, Inc.

http://electroiq.com/blog/2013/01/keys-t...ile-world/

(vested)