Phoenix to put up $170-M facility at Clark

SEMICONDUCTOR giant Phoenix Semiconductor Philippines Corp. (PSPC) plans to build an additional facility at Clark Freeport in Pampanga later this year to meet an expected surge in global demand for its products.

This planned facility, earlier estimated to be worth $170 million, is expected to produce an additional output of 40 million units of memory chips a month, PSPC said in a statement Monday.

“Mobile technologies across different categories have been at the core of semiconductor growth over the past few years and we don’t see this demand waning anytime soon. Couple this with our increased focus to cater to the ever-evolving commercial and technological trends leaves me very confident in our financial performance for 2015,” noted PSPC vice president and chief finance officer Dongjoo Kim.

“Our business has always been about enabling the success of our ultimate customers hence additional growth now means achieving technological breadth, and this is what we intend to achieve moving forward from our initial public offering,” Kim added.

PSPC also disclosed that it recently installed new production machineries and equipment to expand the capacity of the existing facility to 72 million units starting January 2015, from the previous 65 million.

Once all the planned investments have been completed, the plant of PSPC, a subsidiary of STS Semiconductor and Telecommunications Co., is expected to become the parent firm’s biggest facility in terms of space, and will almost be at par with the Korea facility in terms of production. Aside from the Philippines and Korea, STS also has a facility in China.

As of end September 2014, PSPC posted a 61.5 percent growth in earnings to $13.35 million, from the $8.27 million recorded in the same period in 2013. Revenues for the first nine months of 2014 reached $171.14 million, up 10.9 percent from a year ago.

“Our solid execution and discipline in expense-management allowed us to deliver a strong finish in 2014, marking a milestone year for the Company coming from the successful IPO,” Kim said.

PSPC, is engaged in the construction, ownership and operation of a plant for the manufacture, assembly, test and warehousing of semiconductor and memory devices and applications and related products, as well as the performance of related or incidental activities.