By Kiyoshi Takenaka
Hong Kong (Reuters) - Japan's Elpida Memory Inc. (6665.T: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) said on Wednesday the price of its DRAM chips for the current quarter is likely to be stable to firmer from the previous quarter, reversing its earlier outlook for a 10-15 percent decline.
Elpida, the world's fifth-largest dynamic random access memory (DRAM) chip maker, also said its earnings forecasts for January-March were conservative and hoped to exceed the existing outlook. DRAMS are used mostly in personal computers.
Elpida said earlier this year its operating profit for the January-March quarter would likely come in a range between 500 million yen ($4.32 million) and 4.5 billion yen.
"Demand in the first quarter is getting stronger especially for DDR2 DRAM in the PC market," Toshiharu Namimatsu, president of Elpida Memory's Hong Kong operations, said at the Reuters Global Technology, Media and Telecoms Summit.
"So, we are quite confident that our average selling price will at least stay unchanged from the previous quarter or even more than that."
He said contract prices for March are likely to be even higher than in February.
Spot DRAM prices have been firming in recent months as memory chip makers such as Hynix Semiconductor Inc. (000660.KS: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) shifted their production capacity to hot-selling NAND flash from DRAM chips.
Shares in Elpida, owned 20 percent by electronics conglomerate Hitachi Ltd. (6501.T: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) and 14 percent by NEC Corp. (6701.T: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz), rose 1.64 percent to close at 4,340 yen on the Reuters news, beating the Tokyo stock market's electrical machinery index , which fell 1.7 percent. Continued...
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