Samsung isn’t interested in spinning off foundry unit, Reuters reports

Samsung isn’t interested in spinning off its contract chip manufacturing business as well as its logic chip designing operation, Chairperson Jay Y. Lee told Reuters, Nell Jerome Morales and Heekyong Yang report. According to analysts, the businesses are incurring billions of dollars of annual losses due to weak demand and have been dragging down the overall performance of the company, while several sources familiar with the matter have told Reuters that Samsung has struggled to win big orders from customers to fill up new capacity. Asked if Samsung was considering carving out the chip manufacturing business called foundry or its System LSI logic chip designing business, Lee told Reuters: “We are hungry to grow the business. Not interested in spinning (them) off. Lee also said Samsung’s project to build a new chip factory in Taylor, Texas has been “a little bit tough, because of a changing situation (and the U.S. presidential) election.”