DRAM Manufacturer ProMOS Lays Off 500 Workers

Taiwanese DRAM manufacturer ProMOS Technologies was hit very badly during the currently ongoing global recession and is struggling to survive at the verge of bankruptcy. "Right now, we're just trying to survive," said Ben Tseng, a vice president at ProMOS, in an interview. "At today's DRAM price, we cannot afford to run at full capacity."

So, it doesn't really come as a big surprise that last week, "ProMOS laid off another 500 workers and mothballed another chip factory to slim operations to what it can afford to operate with the roughly NT$700 million (US$21.39 million) it's able to bring in every month selling DRAM and other kinds of memory chips.

The chip maker's revenue hit a new low in the first quarter, NT$1.85 billion compared to NT$7.76 billion a year ago. The net loss for the quarter was NT$8.60 billion, bigger than the NT$8.05 billion loss in the first quarter of 2008.

The company's outstanding debt stood at NT$89.5 billion as of the middle of 2008, according to figures supplied by the Taiwan government, but that figure does not include the April bond repayment.

Analysts say the company faces continued hardship because of the global recession and weak DRAM prices."