A-Data Loses Millions During Fourth Quarter of 2010

It seems that while some companies saw their businesses flourishing over the course of 2010, A-Data was not so lucky, at least not during the last three-month period of the year.

Of all the market segment, DRAM may be said to have started to go downhill the worst late last year.

While demand for NAND recovered enough to prevents ASPs (average selling prices) from falling too ridiculously low, DRAM chips were not as lucky.

Because of rapid transitions to better manufacturing processes, supply increased quite a lot, but demand did not keep up.

As such, contract quotes for such chips have been falling for months, especially in the fourth quarter of 2010.

Needless to say, this did not bode well at all for all the companies that specialize in such products, A-Data being one of them.

According to a certain report made by Digitmes, the outfit actually incurred losses in the October-December period, not just the whole year.

The total loss for 2010 was of NT$143 million, which corresponds to a net loss per share of NT$0.64.

Oddly enough, net losses were larger during Q4, reaching NT$171 million, which is the equivalent of US$5.88 million.

This means a NT$0.76 loss per share and implies that the gains of the previous three quarters were just barely able to make up for part of the downhill DRAM trends.

Fortunately, DRAM chip prices have rebounded by 20% over the past couple of days, so the outfit hopes to see a rebound in Q1, 2011.

That A-Data has also started to build up its NAND Flash inventory is a fact which will no doubt help it in this regard.

What remains to be seen is just how the situation progresses and if spot prices see a good enough comeback to make a visible difference form a financial standpoint.