Sino-American Silicon Pursues Ambitious Goal

Taipei, Jan. 31, 2011 (CENS)--Chairman M.G. Lu of Sino-American Silicon Products, Inc. recently announced his company will increase output of sapphire wafers to 500,000 units a month and six million units a year within three years, becoming Taiwan's No.1 supplier of the crucial material for LED (light emitting diode) manufacturing.

In December 2010, the company turned out 60,000 sapphire wafers and generated revenue of NT$50 million (US$1.6 million at US$1:NT$30) a month using its 10-some factories. It projects revenue for this month to rise 25% and output to soar to 180,000 wafers a month by the end of this year.

Sapphire wafer production helped the firm rake in revenue of NT$400 million (US$13 million), which constituted 2% of its 2010 revenue of NT$22.4 billion (US$746 million). The company plans to boost the percentage to over 5% by the end of this year.

Sino-American's operation is composed of silicon-wafer manufacturing, crystalline-silicon manufacturing and sapphire-wafer manufacturing. In 2010 alone, its silicon-wafer manufacturing surged 60%, its crystalline-silicon manufacturing doubled and its sapphire-wafer manufacturing tripled year on year.

Industry executives estimated Sino-American to earn NT$3.6 billion (US$120 million) in after-tax net income, or NT$11 per share, in 2010, soaring 6.6 times from a year earlier.

The company has reportedly set aside NT$5 billion (US$166 million) for capacity expansion and is looking for one or two hectares of land as the site for its new factories.

Sino-American was opened 30 years ago and its revenue has grown 40 times over the past 13 years beginning 1998.