The 4DS Memory Ltd (ASX: 4DS) share price has crashed lower for the second consecutive day, trading down 12.24% this afternoon to close at 21.5 cents. It's a sharp come-down for the 4DS Memory share price, which touched its 52-week high of 28 cents just last week.
And it comes despite the semi-conductor manufacturer releasing positive results today on its progess in developing its memory technology.
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Why is the 4DS Memory share price falling?
In today's release, the company announced results from its second non-platform lot of testing. This was done as a follow up to ensure the validity of the initial test performed in June last year. At the time, the company said it had measured "the highest speed and endurance in the additional wafers lot" that it had ever recorded. A wafer is a thin slice of semi-conductor which is used for the fabrication of integrated circuits.
As such, 4DS Memory said today it has been able to repeat the results for each of the key memory characteristics (speed, endurance and retention) that were achieved with the first non-platform lot. Moreover, 19 of the 21 device wafers were functional, which is the highest number the company has achieved.
Next stage for 4DS Memory
4DS Memory advised that it had incorporated the learnings from the second non-platform lot test into the process split conditions for the second platform lot of 300mm wafers. This second lot has been manufactured using a memory platform created by its digital tech partner, imec, and contains dense memory arrays which will give the conductors more computing power.
4DS Memory started producing the wafers last week and expects to analyse them in the second quarter of 2021.
The company hopes the analysis will help pave the way for it to pursue its strategic objective of fabricating wafers with chips that operate as fully functional megabit memories.
If successful, this may bring 4DS Memory closer to its 2021 objectives to achieve a potential corporate transaction.
Management comments
4DS Memory managing director Dr Guido Arnout welcomed the results, saying:
We are pleased that the success of the second non-platform lot has meant that we were able to immediately commence fabrication of the second platform lot. We are grateful to our partner, imec, for scheduling a slot in its state of the art fab in such a timely manner, particularly given the high demand for access to fab equipment in the current semiconductor market environment.
Until today's market fall, the 4DS Memory share price had performed well since the start of the year, gaining 57% in January alone.
