VIA and SiS March results surprise

SiS just released their monthly revenue information for March, while VIA did a few days ago, and both exceed expectations, with significant month-on-month increases; +76% for SiS and +39% for VIA. In both cases, it should be noted that February is traditionally a weak month, because of the chinese New Year and related holidays. These increases remain above the historical average, however, and make March's numbers better than even those released in December and January.

However, these revenue figures are still significantly down year-over-year, and that most likely also means reduced gross margins, a net loss, and negative cash flow. Sadly, the quarterly results for VIA and SiS will only be released in late April or May, and in this case that includes the Q4 results which haven't been released yet apparently. Considering the massive revenue declines began about then, it is thus rather difficult to estimate how significant the problems are for these two firms.

Interestingly, if their results are up, it most likely means results of some other companies in the chipset business (NVIDIA, AMD and Intel mostly) will go down, at least in theory and assuming the market doesn't suddenly expand for no good reason. It is thus interesting to ponder what company has been losing share in March, and why. Hopefully Mercury Research and DRAMeXchange reports will bring some light to this question.