Chi Mei Optoelectronics Corp (
Chi Mei Optoelectronics, Taiwan's biggest maker of TV flat panels, posted quarterly earnings of NT$8.33 billion (US$255 million), or NT$1.7 per share, for the October-December period of last year.
That also reversed a loss of some NT$3.51 billion amid severe oversupply in the final quarter of 2004.
The gross margin for the fourth quarter jumped to almost 25 percent, outpacing all competitors including the world's biggest player LG Philips LCD Co of South Korea.
The company expected that sustained demand from slim-screen TVs would partly offset weak computer demand in the traditionally slack January-March quarter.
"We are confident in the TV market. The unit sales of our TV panels will grow by another 10 percent to reach 2.2 million units this quarter from last quarter," president Ho Jau-yang (
The optimism also reflected the company's aggressive capital spending of NT$100 billion for this year, up 67 percent from NT$61 billion spent last year.
The company aims to repeat last quarter's sales of 7.4 million units in the first three months of this year, Ho said.
But the profitability may trend lower in the current quarter as the price would fall slightly due to seasonal factors, Ho said, echoing LG Philips LCD, which forecast a 5-percent drop.
The panel price jumped 13 percent to average US$219 per unit in the final quarter of last year from US$193 a year earlier, according to Chi Mei Optoelectronics' statistics.
Frank Lee (
"Taiwanese flat-panel makers have stronger competitiveness in the TV panel area. Besides, they sold more 32-inch panels than their Korean rivals, which are busy developing bigger-sized panels," Lee said.
The TV business made up almost half of Chi Mei Optoelectronics' total revenues in the final quarter of last year, up from some 35 percent a year ago.
Lee said Chi Mei Optoelectronics' fourth-quarter results largely matched his expectation.
Lee gave a "buy" rating on Chi Mei Optoelectronics with a 12-month target price of NT$68. That implies a 33-percent upside from Chi Mei Optoelectronics' closing price of NT$51.1 yesterday.
For the full year last year, Chi Mei Optoelectronics' net income plunged over 53 percent to NT$8.03 billion, the company said in a statement.
Revenues, however, leapt nearly 50 percent to NT$152.85 billion year-on-year, the company said in a statement released earlier.
Chi Mei Optoelectronics also announced yesterday that it had signed an agreement with Sharp Corp to share several thousand patents related to manufacturing panels for LCD TVs and computers in a bid to expand their customer base.
"The deal will help us lure more customers from Japan, where Chi Mei Optoelectronics has a weaker customer base," Hsu Chun-hwa (
Under the agreement, the two companies will not file patent infringement lawsuits against each other and their customers for a five-year period.
BUSINESS UPDATE: The iPhone assembler said operations outlook is expected to show quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year growth for the second quarter Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday reported strong growth in sales last month, potentially raising expectations for iPhone sales while artificial intelligence (AI)-related business booms. The company, which assembles the majority of Apple Inc’s smartphones, reported a 19.03 percent rise in monthly sales to NT$510.9 billion (US$15.78 billion), from NT$429.22 billion in the same period last year. On a monthly basis, sales rose 14.16 percent, it said. The company in a statement said that last month’s revenue was a record-breaking April performance. Hon Hai, known also as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), assembles most iPhones, but the company is diversifying its business to
Apple Inc has been developing a homegrown chip to run artificial intelligence (AI) tools in data centers, although it is unclear if the semiconductor would ever be deployed, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. The effort would build on Apple’s previous efforts to make in-house chips, which run in its iPhones, Macs and other devices, according to the Journal, which cited unidentified people familiar with the matter. The server project is code-named ACDC (Apple Chips in Data Center) within the company, aiming to utilize Apple’s expertise in chip design for the company’s server infrastructure, the newspaper said. While this initiative has been
GlobalWafers Co (環球晶圓), the world’s No. 3 silicon wafer supplier, yesterday said that revenue would rise moderately in the second half of this year, driven primarily by robust demand for advanced wafers used in high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips, a key component of artificial intelligence (AI) technology. “The first quarter is the lowest point of this cycle. The second half will be better than the first for the whole semiconductor industry and for GlobalWafers,” chairwoman Doris Hsu (徐秀蘭) said during an online investors’ conference. “HBM would definitely be the key growth driver in the second half,” Hsu said. “That is our big hope
The consumer price index (CPI) last month eased to 1.95 percent, below the central bank’s 2 percent target, as food and entertainment cost increases decelerated, helped by stable egg prices, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday. The slowdown bucked predictions by policymakers and academics that inflationary pressures would build up following double-digit electricity rate hikes on April 1. “The latest CPI data came after the cost of eating out and rent grew moderately amid mixed international raw material prices,” DGBAS official Tsao Chih-hung (曹志弘) told a news conference in Taipei. The central bank in March raised interest rates by