SGS-Thomson Micrelectronics NV is now budgeting for further losses both this year and next, Thomson-CSF SA chairman Alain Gomez has revealed, but he gave no indication of the scale of the losses, which would follow one profitable year since its formation – last year, when it had a net profit of $3.2m after a $69m loss in 1988. The first half had continued profitable, but the decline in the dollar and increased Japanese competition has sent it into sharp reverse during the current period, although in July it had still been looking for profits this year. It has put on ice plans to enter a joint venture on dynamic memory chips, having already decided an entry from scratch would cost too much.
