Taiwan's UMC posts net loss in 3Q

TAIPEI, Taiwan - Taiwan's United Microelectronics Corp. said it swung to a quarterly loss for the first time in almost seven years as the value of the company's financial investments plumetted and global demand for wafers weakened.

UMC, the world's second-largest contract chip maker by revenue after Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., posted a third quarter loss of 1.41 billion New Taiwan dollars ($44 million) compared with a profit of NT9.23 billion a year earlier, it said in a statement Wednesday.

It was the first time the company had posted a net loss since the fourth quarter of 2001.

Revenue fell 1.9 percent to NT$24.75 billion ($768 million) from NT$25.24 billion in the second quarter of this year. It was down 20.2 percent from NT$31.03 billion in the third quarter of 2007.

Chief Executive Sun Shih-wei said the third-quarter results reflected previous guidance, and offered little encouragement for the short term.

"Looking ahead to Q4, we see that the environment is more challenging than we previously anticipated," Sun said. "Customers have adopted a cautious attitude with regard to their wafer demand forecasts due to uncertainty related to the current global economic situation."

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