Spending spree earns capital punishment for DRAM suppliers

EL SEGUNDO, USA: After engaging in a massive capital spending program during the middle of the decade, the worldwide DRAM industry now has sufficient manufacturing capacity to last through 2012, causing suppliers to cease expenditures on expanding production for the next few years, according to iSuppli Corp.

“DRAM makers spent $50 billion on new chip-making gear and fabs from 2005 to 2007, equaling 55 percent of total industry revenue during the period,” said Mike Howard, senior DRAM analyst for iSuppli.

“The results of this unprecedented boom in capital spending were a 125 percent increase in wafer capacity and a 349 percent increase in bit output. This in turn led to a painful oversupply situation that caused prices to drop. Since early 2007, DRAM companies have incurred a combined operating loss of nearly $16 billion.”

The rapid capacity expansion also has spurred a plunge in capital spending among DRAM makers. Their expenditures on semiconductor manufacturing equipment will amount to $4.4 billion in 2009, down 79.2 percent from the peak of $21.1 billion in 2007.

This low level of spending is entirely devoted to lithography transitions, i.e., migrations to more advanced process geometries, rather than to expanding capacity.

The figure presents global DRAM revenue and capital spending from 2000 to 2009.Source: iSuppli, Nov. 2009

“Current wafer capacity will be able to meet demand until 2012 or 2013, depending on how quickly DRAM makers transition to more advanced lithographies,” Howard said.

“Considering it takes about two years to build a new fab, we don’t see the need for capital spending to go toward new capacity for the next few years. The DRAM market historically has been extremely cyclical; keeping capacity at a rational level could help the industry minimize that cyclicality.”

Some factors could cause the projected 2012 timing of the supply/demand crossover to change. These include a more—or less—robust global economic recovery, the future of some of the Taiwanese memory companies, and the rapidity with which the industry migrates to more advanced process geometries.

Source: iSuppli, USA