By Kirk Ladendorf
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Published: 9:34 p.m. Friday, Jan. 15, 2010
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Spansion Inc., the chipmaker whose only factory is in Austin, said Friday that it expects to emerge from bankruptcy in February.
The Sunnyvale, Calif. -based company, which makes flash memory chips for a variety of electronics products, reported a profit of $4.3 million on revenue of $307.1 million for the fourth quarter, which ended Dec. 27. It was the second quarterly profit in a row and compared with a loss of $2.1 billion on sales of $468 million in the same quarter a year earlier.
"Spansion's core markets showed strength this quarter and helped the company easily surpass our expectations for revenue in 2009," CEO John Kispert said. "With our restructuring and reorganization activities largely behind us, we look forward to continued strong results in 2010."
The company also had $325 million in cash on hand at the end of 2009, up $100 million from the end of the first quarter.
A hearing is set for Feb. 11 in federal bankruptcy court to give final approval to the company's reorganization plan.
For Spansion, getting healthier has meant getting smaller. The company largely exited one market — cell phones — that had accounted for about half of its sales. Executives said the cell phone market required heavy research and development spending but did not provide the profit margins the company needed.
Spansion went through a dramatic downsizing shortly before it filed for bankruptcy last March. The company cut 3,000 jobs around the world in February, including more than 160 in Austin.
The company now employs 4,130 people worldwide, including 940 in Austin. Most of its Austin operations center on Fab 25 on East Ben White Boulevard, which is Spansion's only remaining chip factory. Some of its older products are produced in factories that it formerly owned in Japan. Those factories are owned by Spansion Japan Ltd., which is going through its own bankruptcy reorganization as a stand-alone company.
The company also has an agreement with China's Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp. to make future generations of chips using more advanced processes.
Spansion now concentrates on the embedded electronics market, which involves memory chips for telecommunications equipment, consumer electronics devices, gaming equipment, TV set-top control boxes, automotive equipment, personal computer peripherals and networking gear.
Spansion says it can serve those markets well while spending less on cutting-edge chip manufacturing technology.
kladendorf@statesman.com; 445-3622
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