ST out of the slump

By Kurt Sansone

With STMicroelectronics reporting higher global earnings and profits for the second quarter 2002, the performance of the Malta plant is expected to be similar to the other plants in the ST system, a top official at the Kirkop facility told The Malta Financial and Business Times yesterday.

STMicroelectronics posted revenues of USD1,531.1 million for the second quarter, which accounts for a 13 per cent increase over the revenues reported for the first quarter 2002.

Gross profits were also up by 27.4 per cent over the first quarter results. ST posted a gross profit of USD575.8 million.

The vice president of ST’s Malta plant, Gene Gretchen, when asked whether the worst was over explained that the industry came out of the bottleneck during the first quarter of this year.

"We have received no new inputs which would require us to re-evaluate this opinion," Mr Gretchen said.

ST’s results were very encouraging, indicating that the multi-national company was on the way out of the slowdown it fell into after the global semiconductor industry experienced a slump last year.

Asked to comment on the outlook, Mr Gretchen quoted the corporation’s CEO Pasquale Pistorio who said that the company expects slightly higher revenues for the third quarter.

In the statement accompanying the financial results the company said that evaluation of backlog data and the impact of seasonal factors indicate that revenues for the third quarter would signify an increase over second quarter levels and an improvement over third quarter 2001 revenues.

Meanwhile, on Friday STMicroelectronics and Alcatel announced the completion of the acquisition of Alcatel Microelectronics by ST. The announcement was made after the companies received approval from the EU and the US. The cash transaction is worth EUR390 million.