Dainippon Screen tumbles to Q1 loss on chip gear

Mon Aug 11, 2008 5:05am EDT

TOKYO, Aug 11 (Reuters) - Dainippon Screen Manufacturing Co , the world's top maker of silicon wafer cleaners, fell to a quarterly loss on a drop in chip equipment sales, but it kept its annual outlook higher than the market consensus, eyeing a recovery in orders from logic chip makers and demand from LCD makers.

Memory chip makers have been reining in spending, hurting sales at semiconductor equipment makers such as Advantest Corp and Tokyo Electron Ltd .

Dainippon Screen is counting on demand from liquid crystal display makers to stay solid while it waits for orders from logic chip makers to recover.

For the year to March, the Kyoto-based company kept its full-year operating profit outlook at 12.7 billion yen ($115.5 million), down 13 percent from the previous year and above a consensus average of 11.7 billion yen by 12 analysts polled by Reuters Estimates.

Total orders in April-June rose 14 percent, as orders for flat panel display-making equipment more than quadrupled, outpacing a 32 percent fall in orders for semiconductor making machines.

The orders take anywhere from two to 10 months to fill.

Dainippon Screen tumbled to an operating loss of 834 million yen in April-June from a 4.58 billion yen profit in the same period a year ago.

It fell to a net loss of 3.05 billion yen from a 2.13 billion yen profit the previous year, on sales of 52.06 billion yen, down 25 percent.

Prior to the announcement, its shares closed up 7.8 percent to 415 yen, outperforming the benchmark Nikkei average .N225, which rose 2.0 percent. (Reporting by Mayumi Negishi; Editing by Hugh Lawson)