Local flat-panel TV maker Amtran Technology Co Ltd (瑞軒科技), which owns North America’s top TV vendor Vizio Inc, said yesterday that shipments might grow an additional 50 percent next year on new orders after reporting record-high earnings last quarter as more consumers opted for its products during the economic slump.
“Next year, growth will be higher than this year,” company president Frank Wu (吳春福) told a media briefing yesterday.
Amtran also vowed to more than double the annual capacity at Suzhou Raken Technology Ltd (蘇州樂軒) — its TV manufacturing venture with LG Display Co, to 10 million units next year in order to help cope with next year’s growth.
Shipments of LCD TVs are expected to reach 6 million units next year from a projected 4.5 million units this year and last year’s 3.1 million, Wu said.
“The growth will come partly from orders by new customers and Vizio,” Wu said. “We are starting to make TVs for Chinese vendors, but the number will be limited in the initial stage.”
Starting this quarter, Amtran is set to ship TVs to a new Chinese customer, which is one of China’s top three TV vendors — Skyworth Group (創惟), Hisense Group (海信) and TCL Group — the company said.
Amtran is also scheduled to ship TVs to new customers in the Asia-Pacific region, Mexico and Australia by the end of the year, spokesman Scottie Chiu (邱裕平) said.
“We are trying to diversify our customer portfolio away from Vizio,” Chiu said.
Within the next 12 months, Amtran hopes to increase the share of TV vendors other than Vizio to 20 percent in terms of shipments.
In the second quarter, Amtran’s earnings doubled to NT$510 million (US$15.5 million), from NT$236 million a year ago, after its gross margin rose to a record high at 15.26 percent from 10.78 percent as a result of lower cost, the company said in a statement.
“We have saved costs by designing products jointly with our customers and by reducing raw material spending,” Wu said.
Amtran shipped 950,893 LCD TVs in the April to June period, bringing the total LCD TV shipments to 1.86 million in the first half of this year, its statistics showed.
Amtran shares dropped 0.94 percent to NT$21.1 on the Taiwan Stock Exchange yesterday.
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