华尔街日报
三星电子将控制2008年开支
Samsung Electronics Co. is putting the brakes on spending for new memory-chip factories and production, a step likely to reduce the pressure on chip prices that has cut into the company's profits this year.
At a conference for investors yesterday, Samsung executives said they wouldn't spend more next year than they did this year on new factories and equipment to build memory chips.
Samsung's share-price fell sharply after executives in mid-October boosted fourth-quarter capital spending in memory chips even as they were coping with the worst pricing environment for chips since 2001.
In previous industry downturns, Samsung has invested aggressively in new chip-making capacity, with the result that it was able to grab market share and bigger profits when the demand for chips caught up with supply.
With some analysts now fearful that Samsung's chip division will turn unprofitable during the first half of next year, executives told investors they would throttle back, though the precise amount for capital spending next year hasn't been set. 'We are not going to flood the market,' Chu Woosik, the company's chief of investor relations, said at the meeting with 250 investors and analysts.
Most of Samsung's competitors in memory chips have announced they will cut capital spending next year. Some of them are already experiencing losses in memory chips, leading some investors and analysts to anticipate mergers as companies seek greater size to cope with downturns.
When an investor asked Hong Wan-hoon, a vice president in Samsung's memory division, whether the company might acquire any rivals, he replied, 'We are not participating in this but we are watching carefully what happens.'
Separately, executives told investors that Samsung expects its cellphone unit sales to rise 17% to about 50 million units in the fourth quarter from 42.6 million in the third quarter. But they said the division's operating margin will fall to around 9% from 12% because of higher marketing costs.
Shares in Samsung Electronics rose 0.9% to 544,000 won ($585.40) on the Korea Stock Exchange yesterday. On Tuesday, the company's shares fell more than 4% on news that the government will launch another major investigation into alleged wrongdoing -- including the creation of slush funds and accounting fraud -- at companies in the Samsung group conglomerate.
At the investor conference, Mr. Chu repeated the company's previous statements that it had done nothing wrong.