DRAM saga shafts Danish memory maker

The DRAM price meltdown has claimed a fresh victim in the shape of Danish memory maker Memory Card Technology.

The company said today it had applied for bankruptcy court protection after weekend talks with investors failed to secure a refinancing plan.

The application, in Aarhus, Denmark, came a week after the outfit warned losses for the fiscal year would be wider than expected due to DRAM chip prices continuing to fall. At the time the company did not give financial details, but warned the board had "undertaken a substantial lowering of expectations" for the year ending June 30.

This was the second time in three months Memory Card had cut its sales forecast - in November it said it expected to record losses of 195 million kroner ($24.1 million) for the year.

The company, which sells memory to vendors such as Fujitsu, IBM, Samsung, Toshiba, Siemens and Acer, said it aimed to keep trading during the payment suspension. It has more than 300 staff, with factories in Europe, the US and Australia.

Like most of its rivals, Memory Card last year said it expected DRAM demand to start outstripping supply, which would then push prices up. When this didn't happen it had to resort to flogging its products on the spot market.

Earlier this month the price of 64Mb SDRAM chips slipped to under $3. Analysts and chipmakers do not expect the DRAM market to rebound until the second half of 2001. ®

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