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ELPIDA'S NEW PRESIDENT HAS BIG PLANS FOR HIS COMPANY

Elpida Memory Inc, the memory-chip joint venture between NEC Corp and Hitachi Ltd, aims to be the world's third-largest memory-chip maker within the next three years, the company's new president said.

Although acknowledging Elpida has a "massive amount of losses," Yukio Sakamoto vowed to make the chipmaker profitable by 2005, predicting the company may have a profit as early as the October-to-December quarter of next year.

NEC and Hitachi last fiscal year posted billions of dollars in losses at their semiconductor businesses, mainly because of computer-memory chips. In a bid to recover, Elpida is seeking financing from other chipmakers, Sakamoto told reporters in Tokyo at a press conference to mark his first day on the job."We need money to expand capacity so that we can lower production costs."

Elpida has held talks with as many as three companies interested in investing in Elpida by taking an equity stake, Sakamoto said. He declined to identify the companies by name, though he said they are chipmakers and chip users.

"The memory-chip market is tough right now," Sakamoto said.

Half of Elpida's production will be dynamic random-access memory chips used in personal computers, he said. The remainder will be DRAM chips for non-PC products such as servers, DVD recorders and video-game consoles. Global DRAMs sales plunged 62 percent to US$11.9 billion last year.

Analysts expect Sakamoto to raise funds and attract investments from companies such as Intel Corp to purchase the most advanced equipment and compete with global rivals.

"I have high expectations," said Yoshihide Ohtake, an analyst at Shinko Securities Co, who rates NEC "neutral minus" and Hitachi "neutral plus." "He has to return Elpida to profit and collect money."

Before serving as the head of UMC Japan, a subsidiary of Taiwan-based United Microelectronics Corp, Sakamoto was president of Nippon Foundry Inc and a deputy manager at Kobe Steel Ltd. He also held various positions with Texas Instruments Japan Ltd.