Chunghwa Picture Tubes Ltd (中華映管), the nation’s third-largest flat panel maker, said yesterday that it might see profits by the end of the year as panel prices rebound to above cost.
Reviving demand has helped boost the prices for liquid-crystal-display (LCD) panels, which are used mostly in computers and TVs, over the past four months and is likely to extend into this month as an insufficient supply of key component glass substrate has limited increases in panel output.
That may help panel suppliers return to the black earlier in the third quarter.
Lagging its bigger rivals by one quarter, Chunghwa Picture “may have the chance to return to the black in the fourth quarter,” chairman Lin Wei-shan (林蔚山) told reporters in Kaohsiung yesterday.
He cited better panel prices and improving factory usage as key factors.
“Prices for certain panels have risen to a level higher than our cost,” Lin said. “[We] see some advantage in small and medium-sized panels.”
Chunghwa Picture said sales from its flat-panel business increased 14.5 percent to NT$3.95 billion (US$120 million) from last month’s NT$3.44 billion, helping the company’s total revenues last month hit a seven-month high of NT$4.48 billion.
That brought the company’s second-quarter revenues to NT$12.57 billion, up 28 percent quarter-on-quarter, or down 64 percent annually.
Lin said Chunghwa Picture also benefited from the Chinese government’s economic stimulus measure, which subsidized LCD TV purchases.
The company mostly supplies panels to Fujian-based TV maker Xiamen Overseas Chinese Electronics Co (廈華電子), in which Chunghwa Picture holds a 36 percent share.
Lin said Chunghwa Picture planned to introduce a strategic partner within a month or two, replacing foreign venture capital firm Warburg Pincus.
Warburg Pincus now owns US$250 million of the company’s convertible bonds.
The venture capital firm will be able to exercise the right to sell the six-year bonds to the company next month on the first anniversary of the issuance.
Chunghwa Picture is also seeking new growth engines in the areas of touch panels and electronic readers, Lin said.
The company’s stock rallied by 6.84 percent to NT$4.84 yesterday amid speculation that it had obtained approval from Chinese regulators to buy a controlling 71 percent stake, or 500 million shares, in the Chinese electric maker Mindong Electric (Group) Co (閩東電機).
Mindong, which is listed on China’s A-share stock market, in turn would own a 75 percent share of four Chinese companies affiliated with Chunghwa Picture, the Taiwanese company said.
The deal would help Chunghwa Picture obtain bank loans in China more easily, it said.
Separately, local rivals AU Optronics Corp (友達光電) and Chi Mei Optoelectronics Corp (奇美電子) said yesterday that they expected third-quarter sales to increase from the previous three-month period because of the global glass shortage and increasing Chinese demand.
ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY BLOOMBERG
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day