14 DAY TRIAL // Hynix Semiconductor is a Korean chip manufacturer with some big plans for the near future. It only needs some time to reap the rewards of careful and aggressive investments in next generation products. The Hynix president Kim Jong-Kap recently said that "several companies have expressed interest in buying a 36 percent stake currently still held by the creditors who bailed it out in the aftermath of the 1997 Asian crisis" and he was cited by the site Physorg.
Right now, Hynix Semiconductor is the fifth largest computer memory and general use chip producer in the world and it recently stated that it will increase its sales to 18 billion dollars by 2010 and to 25 billion dollars by 2012.
The statement simply read: "From now, Hynix will take a growth-oriented stance through aggressive investment ... to become the world's best in terms of size and quality by 2017". In order to achieve such an increase in sales, the company will devote a full tenth part of its revenues in research and development, while at the same time upgrading and adding new production lines. Hynix aims to release a new type of computer memory chip called Phase-change Random Access Memory (PRAM for short) by the year 2009, that is expected to become an important memory device that could replace NAND and flash based ones in the next decade.
The president of Hynix Semiconductor only declared about the share buy out that "Some companies have expressed their interest but a solo bid by a strategic investor would be difficult due to the size of the company" and "There could be (other) options like forging an alliance with financial investors." After years of restructuring and reorganization from the Asian crisis of 1997 and the near collapse of 2000, Hynix Semiconductor is one of the strongest Korean companies, as investors injected no less than 4.6 billion dollars in it.