Quanta Computer Inc (廣達電腦), the world’s second-largest contract notebook computer maker, is likely to gain most among its peers from Hewlett-Packard Co’s (HP) solid first-quarter financial results and better full-year earning forecast, Citigroup said in a client note.
“We expect Quanta to benefit most from HP’s market share gains in the PC sector as it is the largest HP NB supplier for 2010,” Eve Jung (戎宜蘋) and Chen Chun-ning wrote in the note on Thursday.
HP said on Thursday that its profits increased to US$2.32 billion in the first quarter ending Jan. 31, from US$1.86 billion a year earlier. Revenue jumped 8.2 percent to US$31.18 billion over the same period.
Citigroup said in the note that the sales strength from HP’s TouchSmart tablet PCs, which the US computer maker launched on Jan. 6, might also help increase orders for Quanta’s all-in-one PCs this year.
Quanta posted NT$76.4 billion (US$2.38 billion) in sales last month, up 83.47 percent from NT$41.64 billion a year ago. The company reported NT$791.84 billion in revenue last year, but is targeted to exceed NT$1 trillion this year, chairman Barry Lam (林百里) said at a year-end party for employees on Jan. 29.
Shipments of notebooks, which account for about three-quarters of the company’s total revenue, are expected to hit 50 million units this year, up 40 percent from 35.9 million notebooks for last year, vice chairman and president C.C. Leung (梁次震) said at the time.
On the strength of Quanta’s increasing economies of scale and the fact that the company boasts the strongest vertical integration capability among contract manufacturers, Citigroup reiterated its “buy” rating on Quanta shares, which have declined 8.05 percent this year and traded at NT$64 on Feb. 10.
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