Insight - How a global foundry is losing money in a chip boom

In the red: A 300 millimetre silicon wafer at the GlobalFoundries Inc semiconductor plant in Dresden, Germany. The New York-based company is the world’s third-largest contract chipmaker and has just filed for a Nasdaq listing. — Bloomberg

THE current state of the global semiconductor market has been alternatively labelled by auto makers, politicians and executives as a shortage, a crisis, and even a squeeze.

For the companies at the centre of it all, the only word to describe what we’re seeing is a chip boom. It’s inexplicable, then, that any company which ought to be bathing in profits could still be losing money.