SEMICONDUCTOR Manufacturing International Corp, China's biggest chip maker, yesterday posted its sixth straight quarterly loss, as customer orders slowed amid weakening consumer demand for electronics products.

The third-quarter net loss widened to US$30.3 million, or 8.1 cents an American depositary receipt, from US$25.6 million, or 6.9 cents, a year earlier, the company said in a Hong Kong stock exchange statement. The result was better than the median estimate for a US$40-million loss in a Bloomberg News survey of three analysts. Sales fell 3.9 percent to US$375.9 million.

Semiconductor Manufacturing forecast sales in the current quarter will fall at least 25 percent from the previous three months as slowing demand for handsets and music players curbs orders for chips. This will probably delay Chief Executive Officer Richard Chang's plan to end losses, analyst Pranab Sarmah said.

"Customers have been pulling orders from the chip foundries," Sarmah, the Hong Kong-based head of electronics research at Daiwa Institute of Research, said before the announcement. The company may be unprofitable until 2010, according to Sarmah, who rates the stock "hold."

The Shanghai-based chip maker needs to post about US$400 million in quarterly sales to post a profit, according to Sarmah.

In July, Chang reiterated his forecast for Semiconductor Manufacturing to post a profit in the fourth quarter. The company's decision in April to end its dynamic random access memory business will improve profitability, he said.

Gross profit margin, or the percentage of sales left after deducting production costs, narrowed to 7.2 percent in the second quarter, compared with 10.8 percent a year earlier, Semiconductor Manufacturing said.

Customers including Texas Instruments Inc and Spansion Inc this month both posted earnings that missed analysts' estimates, underscoring a weakening outlook for global chip demand.

Texas Instruments, the second-biggest United States chip maker, on October 21 reported a 27-percent decline in third-quarter profit, and forecast sales will drop as much as 20 percent this quarter as demand for mobile-phone chips slows amid turmoil in global financial markets.