SUMCO Doubles Profit for Year to January

SUMCO Corporation doubled the consolidated recurring profit to 75.835 billion yen with 44.7% higher sales at 319.385 billion yen for the year ending January 2007 from previous year. The subsidiary, SUMCO TECHXIV Corp., which is former Komatsu Electronic Metals and was combined to the group in October 2006, also posted record profit in consolidated and unconsolidated. Higher demand of silicon wafer for semiconductor supported the higher profit. SUMCO and SUMCO TECHXIV increased the output of wafer with 300 millimeters diameter to meet strong demand in the year ending January. In wafer with 200 mm or less diameter segment, SUMCO tried to improve the profitability through high precision products while SUMCO TECHXIV increased the high valued products sales to meet finer pitch trend in semiconductor market. SUMCO TECHXIV posted higher profit through price hike and cost cutting despite of higher cost for polysilicon and other materials.