The biggest Chinese semiconductor maker Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC) reported on Friday a sharp increase of revenues and expressed strong confidence in its full-year growth.

SMIC said that its revenues almost tripled year-on-year to US$221 million in the past quarter, while profits stood at US$34.17 million, compared with net losses of US$30.51 million one year ago.

"We believe SMIC is well on the track of our business plan for this year," said Richard Chang, president and chief executive officer of the Shanghai-based company listed on the Hong Kong and New York stock exchanges.

The company's diluted earnings per share in the second quarter were 0.19 US cents or HK$1.47.

Chang added at an online conference call that increasing product offerings and the new customers were major growth engines for his company.

The company got 15 new customers in the second quarter, including seven firms in China.

Wafer shipments also rose to 201,534 pieces in the quarter from 174,325 in the first three months of this year.

Consumer products grew the fastest with its contribution to SMIC's revenues rising from 12.7 per cent in the first quarter to 17.1 per cent in the past one.

Chang said his company did not suffer from the macro-economic control of the Chinese Government to curb overheating in some industrial sectors.

However, he added the tightening measures might add some difficulties to the company's strategy to march into the automobile integrated circuit business next year.

Chang said SMIC's factory, which has the most advanced 12-inch IC chip technology in China with more than US$1 billion invested, will make memory chips first and them move to logic products and the monthly production will have reached 3,000 to 4,000 wafers per month by the end of this year.

(China Daily July 31, 2004)