Hitachi cashes out its Elpida shares

Hitachi sold 4 million shares of its stake in Elpida Memory to the tune of $118 million, the Japanese electronics maker said Tuesday. Hitachi still owns 19.7 percent of Elpida, which makes Dynamic Random Access Memory (DRAM) for notebook and desktop computers. The two companies said they remain committed to maintaining a business partner relationship, but Elpida will no longer be counted as an affiliate of Hitachi.

Japan's NEC, which also helped create Elpida, said last month that it would sell part of its holdings in Elpida to recover investments and trim assets. Elpida is the world's fifth-largest DRAM memory chipmaker, behind Samsung and Micron, according to market research group iSuppli.