BenQ Corp (
BenQ posted a net income of NT$570 million (US$17.3 million), or NT$0.22 per share, compared with a loss of NT$2.5 billion, or NT$2.51 per share, for the same period last year.
In April, BenQ booked a profit of about NT$1.5 billion from selling 100 million shares of AU Optronics, the world's third-biggest flat panel maker, in which BenQ now owns an 8.42 percent stake.
The stake sale helped BenQ raise cash after the failure of the mobile-phone unit it acquired from Siemens AG in 2005, which put it in the red.
BenQ's operating loss was NT$1.91 billion in the second quarter, as a result of selling cellphones at low prices to clear inventory, president Sheaffer Lee (
Lee said 70 percent of handset stock had been cleared in the second quarter and predicted the rest would be sold this quarter.
"Third-quarter revenues will grow from the second quarter because of the high season," he said.
The momentum is also partly a result of a gain in orders after the company announced in June that it would spin off its brand business and return to its forte, original design manufacturing (ODM).
BenQ -- which will be named "Qisda Corp" (佳世達) after the spinoff on Sept. 1 -- has since gained new orders for liquid-crystal-display (LCD) monitors, projectors and printers, Lee said.
"We are also shipping mobile phones to some European telecom operators, and more handset orders will come in the third and fourth quarters," he said.
After the spinoff, the company will see its LCD monitor business continue to grow, while sales of LCD TV sets will at least double next year, said Hsung Hui (
"Qisda will continue to add to its ODM product portfolio and work on vertical integration in terms of mechanical component production capability," he said.
Six business units will be set up within Qisda: LCD monitors, LCD televisions, projectors, mobile communications, infotainment solutions, and scanners, printers and copiers, he said.
Qisda will work closely with AU Optronics, said Hsung, also a vice president at the panel maker.
"Many of our customers approach AU Optronics not only for panels, but for a whole product set. The future partnership will widen its service offerings," he said.
Frank Su (
"Qisda will be able to leverage the strength of AU Optronics, and this will differentiate it from those ODM makers without panel resources," he said.
BenQ's shares closed up 3.6 percent at NT$15.90 yesterday on the Taiwan Stock Exchange before the earnings release.
Meanwhile, BenQ said in a filing to the Taiwan Stock Exchange yesterday that it will sell 12 million shares of Darfon Electronics Corp (
HORMUZ ISSUE: The US president said he expected crude prices to drop at the end of the war, which he called a ‘minor excursion’ that could continue ‘for a little while’ The United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Kuwait started reducing oil production, as the near-closure of the crucial Strait of Hormuz ripples through energy markets and affects global supply. Abu Dhabi National Oil Co (ADNOC) is “managing offshore production levels to address storage requirements,” the company said in a statement, without giving details. Kuwait Petroleum Corp said it was lowering production at its oil fields and refineries after “Iranian threats against safe passage of ships through the Strait of Hormuz.” The war in the Middle East has all but closed Hormuz, the narrow waterway linking the Persian Gulf to the open seas,
Apple Inc increased iPhone production in India by about 53 percent last year and now makes a quarter of its marquee devices there, reflecting the US company’s efforts to avoid tariffs on China. The company assembled about 55 million iPhones in India last year, up from 36 million a year earlier, people familiar with the matter said, asking not to be named because the numbers aren’t public. Apple makes about 220 million to 230 million iPhones a year globally, with India’s share of the total increasing rapidly. Apple has accelerated its expansion in the world’s most populous country in recent years, bolstered
HEADWINDS: The company said it expects its computer business, as well as consumer electronics and communications segments to see revenue declines due to seasonality Pegatron Corp (和碩) yesterday said it aims to grow its artificial intelligence (AI) server revenue more than 10-fold this year from last year, driven by orders from neocloud solutions clients and large cloud service providers. The electronics manufacturing service provider said AI server revenue growth would be driven primarily by the Nvidia Corp GB300 server platform. Server shipments are expected to increase each quarter this year, with the second half likely to outperform the first half, it said. The AI server market is expected to broaden this year as more inference applications emerge, which would drive demand for system-on-chip, application-specific integrated circuits
PROJECTION: TSMC said it expects strong growth this year, with revenue in US dollars projected to grow by about 30 percent, outperforming the industry Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday reported consolidated sales last month reached NT$317.66 billion (US$9.98 billion), the highest ever for the month of February, driven by robust demand for chips built using the company’s advanced 3-nanometer (3nm) process. Last month’s figure was up 22.2 percent from a year earlier, but fell 20.8 percent from January, the world’s largest contract chipmaker said in a statement. For the first two months of the year, TSMC posted cumulative sales of NT$718.91 billion, up 29.9 percent from a year earlier. Analysts attributed the growth to sustained global demand for artificial intelligence (AI) products
RSS