Shares of the world’s third-largest PC supplier, Acer Inc (宏碁), rallied to a three-and-a-half-year high after the company said notebook computer shipments could rise by as much as 40 percent this quarter.
Acer shares rose 2.55 percent to close at NT$76.50, its highest since Jan. 5, 2006, outpacing the benchmark index, which edged up 0.29 percent. Acer president Gianfranco Lanci gave an upbeat third-quarter outlook during a teleconference with investors on Tuesday night.
Notebook shipments could grow between 35 percent and 40 percent from the previous quarter, Lanci said.
Acer’s public relations officer confirmed the forecast. The company did not provide detailed shipment figures.
Lanci said the notebooks accounted for 67 percent of the company’s product sales in the second quarter, up from 60 percent in the same period last year. He attributed the rising demand to back-to-school sales and Chinese buying of electronics as part of its economic stimulus plan.
Acer’s second-quarter desktop and notebook shipments totaled 9.2 million units, representing a year-on-year growth of 34.2 percent. This helped Acer to take the No. 3 spot worldwide, with a market share of 13.5 percent, market researcher Gartner said.
Shipments could grow another 10 percent sequentially in the final quarter, Lanci said.
Sales will be driven by the introduction of Microsoft Corp’s Windows 7 operating system and back-to-school demand, the Chinese-language Commercial Times quoted Lanci as saying at the investor conference.
Acer’s stock will continue to rise “in the runup to the Windows 7 launch on Oct. 22, underpinned by Acer’s strong execution and good track record,” wrote Henry King (金文衡) and Kevin Lu, Taipei-based analysts at Goldman Sachs Group Ltd said in a report yesterday.
The investment bank raised the company’s price target by 16 percent to NT$86 and kept the rating at “neutral.”
Morgan Stanley also raised its price target by 9.8 percent to NT$90 and maintained its “overweight” rating.
Lanci said operating profit margin could rise to 2.8 percent in the third quarter from 2.6 percent last quarter, adding that it could reach 4 percent as early as next year.
DECOUPLING? In a sign of deeper US-China technology decoupling, Apple has held initial talks about using Baidu’s generative AI technology in its iPhones, the Wall Street Journal said China has introduced guidelines to phase out US microprocessors from Intel Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) from government PCs and servers, the Financial Times reported yesterday. The procurement guidance also seeks to sideline Microsoft Corp’s Windows operating system and foreign-made database software in favor of domestic options, the report said. Chinese officials have begun following the guidelines, which were unveiled in December last year, the report said. They order government agencies above the township level to include criteria requiring “safe and reliable” processors and operating systems when making purchases, the newspaper said. The US has been aiming to boost domestic semiconductor
Nvidia Corp earned its US$2.2 trillion market cap by producing artificial intelligence (AI) chips that have become the lifeblood powering the new era of generative AI developers from start-ups to Microsoft Corp, OpenAI and Google parent Alphabet Inc. Almost as important to its hardware is the company’s nearly 20 years’ worth of computer code, which helps make competition with the company nearly impossible. More than 4 million global developers rely on Nvidia’s CUDA software platform to build AI and other apps. Now a coalition of tech companies that includes Qualcomm Inc, Google and Intel Corp plans to loosen Nvidia’s chokehold by going
ENERGY IMPACT: The electricity rate hike is expected to add about NT$4 billion to TSMC’s electricity bill a year and cut its annual earnings per share by about NT$0.154 Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has left its long-term gross margin target unchanged despite the government deciding on Friday to raise electricity rates. One of the heaviest power consuming manufacturers in Taiwan, TSMC said it always respects the government’s energy policy and would continue to operate its fabs by making efforts in energy conservation. The chipmaker said it has left a long-term goal of more than 53 percent in gross margin unchanged. The Ministry of Economic Affairs concluded a power rate evaluation meeting on Friday, announcing electricity tariffs would go up by 11 percent on average to about NT$3.4518 per kilowatt-hour (kWh)
OPENING ADDRESS: The CEO is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing and artificial intelligence at the trade show’s opening on June 3, TAITRA said Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) chairperson and chief executive officer Lisa Su (蘇姿丰) is to deliver the opening keynote speech at Computex Taipei this year, the event’s organizer said in a statement yesterday. Su is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing (HPC) in the artificial intelligence (AI) era to open Computex, one of the world’s largest computer and technology trade events, at 9:30am on June 3, the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) said. Su is to explore how AMD and the company’s strategic technology partners are pushing the limits of AI and HPC, from data centers to