(Yicai) Nov. 10 -- Shares of Semiconductor Manufacturing International fell after the Chinese semiconductor maker said its net profit shrank over 78 percent in the third quarter of the year.

SMIC [SHA: 688981] was trading down 2.7 percent at CNY55.49 (USD7.61) as of 10.20 a.m. in Shanghai today. The company’s Hong Kong-listed stock [HKG: 0981] fell 3 percent to HKD22.70 (USD2.91).

Net profit narrowed to CNY678 million (USD93.1 million) in the three months ended Sept. 30, mainly because of poor wafer sales and lower capacity utilization, the Shanghai-based chipmaker announced yesterday. Revenue fell 11 percent to CNY11.8 billion (USD1.7 billion).

SMIC’s sales rose 3.9 percent to USD1.6 billion in the third quarter from the previous one, with overall shipments increasing 9.5 percent in the period. The firm’s capacity utilization slipped 1.2 percentage point to 77.1 percent.

In the first three quarters of the year, SMIC reported a net profit of CNY3.7 billion (USD505 million), down 61 percent from a year earlier. Revenue fell 12.4 percent to CNY33.1 billion in the period.

For the ongoing fourth quarter, SMIC expects its sales revenue to increase between 1 percent and 3 percent from the previous quarter.

The company’s gross margin will still be under pressure in the fourth quarter because of the depreciation of new capacity. The figure is expected to drop nearly 20 percent to between 16 percent and 18 percent from the third quarter, when it had already fallen 0.5 percentage point from the second quarter.

Despite the sluggish performance, SMIC raised its full-year capital spending budget to about USD7.5 billion. Based on this figure, the company’s capital expenditure will be about CNY18.5 billion in the fourth quarter, reaching a new quarterly record.

Editor: Futura Costaglione