Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), Taiwan's largest electronics maker, is forecasting its revenues will break NT$2 trillion (US$60.7 billion) this year, its chairman said yesterday.
"The Hon Hai Group will continue to grow," Terry Gou (郭台銘) told employees at the company's annual year-end party yesterday.
Gou said that he forecast at a shareholders' meeting three years ago that the group's sales would exceed NT$1 trillion next year, but that the target had been adjusted upward to NT$2 trillion at last year's meeting.
If the target is met this year, the Hon Hai Group would achieve a new milestone just two years after breaking the NT$1 trillion revenue mark in 2005.
Gou also said he would retreat from the firm's frontline next year, confident that Hon Hai's top management staff would be fully prepared to lead the group to peaks in the future.
"The competitive environment for Hon Hai is likely to intensify as other companies follow its vertically integrated production model and increase component manufacturing," Taiwan Ratings Corp (台灣信評) said in a recent report.
But Hon Hai's competitive position is not likely to be significantly undermined over the near to medium term, given its leading position in production technology, it said.
This year, Hon Hai, which makes digital music players for Apple Computer Inc and games consoles for Sony Corp and Nintendo Co, is expected to speed up its investment in China, Vietnam and India, in a bid to cope with its rapidly expanding growth.
It said on Monday it planned to invest in China's three northeastern provinces -- Liaoning, Jilin and Heilongjiang -- to take advantage of the low costs and large labor force. The investment is estimated to be about US$120 million.
Facilities in Panyang City in Liaoning would produce printed circuit boards, auto parts and consumer electronics for the Hon Hai Group.
Last month, Hon Hai also said it intended to invest US$1 billion building an industrial complex in the Vietnamese capital Hanoi to diversify its manufacturing facilities.
Hon Hai, which has a market capitalization of US$36.5 billion, has already set up major production facilities in China, Mexico, Hungary, India, Finland and the Czech Republic.
The firm predicted that its revenues would grow at an annual rate of 30 percent in the next five years, with the momentum coming from mergers and acquisitions.
The electronics maker announced last June that it would acquire Premier Image Technology Corp (
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