Finance

The semiconductor industry is now on track to eliminate its excess chip inventory, thanks to significant declines in excess inventories in the supply chain in Q4 2004, which marked the end of a nine-month run-up in surplus stockpiles, according to the latest from iSuppli. However, the supply chain still has $1bn in excess chip inventories to burn and with semiconductor ...

Cambridge-based Antenova has secured funding of $12m which it will use to expand the company and develop products which will “change the electronics industry”. Greg McCray, CEO of Antenova, said “a lot of the money” will go into developing a product which the RF specialist is planning to launch next month. “This is integrating an RF module with an antenna,” ...

Strength in semiconductors led the way to 28 per cent increase in revenues for Texas Instruments in 2004. Revenues for the year came in at $12.6bn, as its semiconductor business, growing by 31 per cent, outpaced the company as a whole. Net income for the year grew to $1.9m from the 2003’s $1.2m. “TI delivered excellent growth and improved profitability in ...

Strong demand for semiconductors in the wireless and automotive markets helped lift full year sales revenues at STMicroelectronics by 21 per cent to $8.67bn. Revenues in Q4, the most recent quarter, were also up 4.3 per cent on Q3 at $2.33bn. “This performance was largely driven by seasonal as well as stronger market demand notably within wireless, data storage and ...

ARM has reported end of year results with income before tax for 2004 at £38.5m, up from £22m in 2003. There was an increase in revenues to £152.9m, compared to £128.1m in 2003. The end of the year also ended in growth, with Q4 revenues of £41.5m, up 5 per cent from Q3. There was also a boost of licence ...

CacheLogic, the two year-old Cambridge start-up, has raised another $5.6m to expand its R&D and marketing operations in the peer-to-peer Internet datacomms industry. “Peer-to-peer traffic [data traffic which goes from one Internet user to another where the data is not stored on a central server] is taking between 60 and 80 per cent of total Internet traffic by volume, causing ...

Worldwide semiconductor sales will grow at 15 per cent this year, according to projections at IFS2005 the International Semiconductor Forecast Seminar 2005, organised by Future Horizons in London today. “We think the first half of 2005 will be slow but Q3 will be strong,” said Malcolm Penn, CEO of Future Horzons. He expressed surprise that other analysts are putting out ...

Laser specialist Powerlase has secured £7m of funding which it will use to expand its manufacturing facilities to deal with increased orders and also to develop products. “We’re looking to extend the manufacturing area and staff to cope with new orders and also help with sales,” said Annette Jones, marketing communications manager at Powerlase. “The money will also go towards ...

Infineon Technologies has warned that it expects lower sales for the quarter and intends to make €200m of savings before the end of September. The firm’s falling first quarter revenues – down 9 per cent from the previous quarter – led the firm to issue the warning. Net income was up significantly, however, from €44m to €142m. “As anticipated in our outlook ...

Scientific Generics, the Cambridge technology and business consultancy, has signed an agreement to set up a product development and manufacturing service in Hong Kong. The firm has partnered with the Hong Kong-based manufacturer Automatic International (AML), which has 330,000 square feet of production facilities and a 4,000 strong work force in Dongguan, China. Generics said the venture, which will be ...