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The firm has a business model that sees part of its revenue coming from deals with fabless chip firms and part from foundry services to IDMs.
“We’re looking for further outsourcing deals,” confirmed Thomas Hartung, v-p of sales and marketing at X-Fab.
Hartung added: “We anticipate the market in 2005 might be a little on the weak side compared with 2004.”
X-Fab’s three manufacturing plants – in Germany, Plymouth and Texas – are churning out 28,000 200mm-equivalent wafers a month, with capacity for 36,000.
Plymouth, the firm’s only 200mm fab, has recently added the option of high voltage (50V) BiCMOS on 0.35µm. And, at Electronica last week, the firm unveiled a PIN diode for its 0.6µm BiCMOS process.
“You get a very fast diode with low capacitance,” said Hartung. “Typically it’s used in switching applications, also blue laser pickups for next generation DVDs.”
PIN diodes can be up to twice as fast as conventional PN diodes.
Meanwhile, X-Fab has reported its third quarter financial results, with sales up 27 per cent to €38.3m. Operating profit was €2.4m, a turnaround from the previous year’s loss of €8.2m.
Net income for the first nine months of 2004 was €6.1m, with €0.4m coming from the third quarter.
Revenues in the first nine months totalled €105.3m, up 26 per cent over 2003. The weak US dollar affected earnings, said the firm.
“We expect to report sales in excess of €140 million for fiscal year 2004,” said Hans-Juergen Straub, CEO of X-FAB. “Market researchers forecast a decline of approximately five per cent for the semiconductor market in 2005. However, based on current demand from our customers we do not expect a decline at X-Fab in the coming year.”
