Samsung Unit to Invest $3.6 Billion to Expand Chip Plant in Austin, Texas
Samsung Electronics Co., Asia’s biggest maker of semiconductors, will invest $3.6 billion to expand capacity at its 12-inch chip plant in Austin, Texas.
The new facilities will be used to make large scale integration, or LSI, chips, Bill Cryer, a Samsung spokesman said yesterday in an interview. The company also plans to add 500 jobs. The plant, run by the Samsung Austin Semiconductor LLC unit, will be in full operation by late 2011, he said.
Samsung on May 17 said it will more than double spending on the semiconductor business to about 11 trillion won ($8.7 billion) this year, from 4.5 trillion won in 2009. The company, based in Suwon, South Korea, and rivals including Tokyo-based Toshiba Corp. and Hynix Semiconductor Inc. of Ichon, South Korea, are raising chip production to meet demand for their use in smartphones, cameras and appliances.
The Samsung spending announced yesterday brings its total investment in Austin to more than $9 billion, according to a statement by the unit yesterday. The chipmaker first opened a plant in Austin in 1997, then built another in 2007, Cryer said. The facility has been used to produce NAND flash memory chips, the statement said.
Samsung Electronics gained 4,000 won to 774,000 won at 12:06 p.m. in Seoul trading. The shares have dropped 3 percent this year, compared with a 1.9 percent drop in the benchmark Kospi index.
Net income rose almost sevenfold to 3.99 trillion won in the three months ended March 31 from 582.2 billion won a year earlier. Sales, including overseas affiliates, increased 21 percent to 34.6 trillion won.
To contact the reporter on this story: Arik Hesseldahl in New York at ahesseldahl@bloomberg.net
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