Prime View International Co (元太科技), the world’s largest maker of electronic paper, was in the black for the second consecutive quarter by posting net income of NT$702 million (US$21.3 million) in the first three months of this year, citing strong customer demand for e-readers.
The company is eyeing China this year to fuel growth, chairman Scott Liu (劉思誠) said.
The company’s first-quarter figures were compared with a net loss of NT$950 million in the first quarter of last year and a net income of NT$261 million in the fourth quarter of last year.
Sales in the first three months doubled to NT$5 billion from a year earlier, which was slightly up from NT$4.9 billion in the fourth quarter, showing continued demand for e-readers from global consumers, Liu told an investor conference yesterday.
Earnings per share was NT$0.7 in the first quarter, compared to a loss of NT$1.03 a share a year ago. Gross margins improved to 28.9 percent, from a minus-15.9 percent in the first quarter last year and 13.5 percent in the fourth quarter last year, the company said.
“The first-quarter sales are usually down from the fourth, as the Christmas effect fades,” Liu said. “But we saw huge orders from clients this time around.”
To secure market leadership, Prime View is aggressively making forays into China this year and has sealed several deals.
Last Saturday, Prime View signed a pact with Fanshu.com (蕃薯網) under PKU Founder Group (北京方正), in which e-paper from Prime View would be incorporated in the reading platform of Fanshu.com — China’s largest supplier of copyrighted books.
Fanshu.com has 1.8 million titles in its collection, more than four times those of Amazon.com, Liu said.
One day later, Prime View announced a collaboration with Phoenix Publishing & Media Network (鳳凰出版傳媒), a leading textbook publisher in China.
The partnership will allow Prime View to gauge the needs of the education market and improve e-paper more tailor-made to their needs, said Prime View public relations official Sabine Cheng (鄭惟方).
“They will give us the feedback such as they want to make notes or mark assignments on the e-readers, which will keep us on the loop of market needs,” she said.
Prime View is pouring US$500 million into its e-paper module maker Transcend Optronics (Yangzhou) Co Ltd (川奇光電) located in Yangzhou, China over the next five years, by expanding facilities and building an entire e-paper production ecosystem there.
Liu reiterated yesterday that the launch of Apple Inc’s iPads would not jeopardize e-reader sales, despite some market watchers raising such doubts by pointing out thar iPads offer computer functionality, e-reader features and colored screens at more affordable prices.
“The debut of iPads will help enlarge the e-reader market pie,” Liu said, but added that the Apple product could reduce Prime View’s 90 percent market share in the global e-paper sector.
iPads use LCD panels while Prime View offers reflective panels for device makers.
Price tags of e-readers, currently retailing at US$200 to US$300 per unit, are expected to drop to US$200 by the end of this year and dip to US$99 next year, accelerating penetration, Liu said.
Prior to yesterday’s investor conference, shares of Prime View soared by the daily limit to close at NT$61.6 in Taipei trading.
To many, Tatu City on the outskirts of Nairobi looks like a success. The first city entirely built by a private company to be operational in east Africa, with about 25,000 people living and working there, it accounts for about two-thirds of all foreign investment in Kenya. Its low-tax status has attracted more than 100 businesses including Heineken, coffee brand Dormans, and the biggest call-center and cold-chain transport firms in the region. However, to some local politicians, Tatu City has looked more like a target for extortion. A parade of governors have demanded land worth millions of dollars in exchange
Hong Kong authorities ramped up sales of the local dollar as the greenback’s slide threatened the foreign-exchange peg. The Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) sold a record HK$60.5 billion (US$7.8 billion) of the city’s currency, according to an alert sent on its Bloomberg page yesterday in Asia, after it tested the upper end of its trading band. That added to the HK$56.1 billion of sales versus the greenback since Friday. The rapid intervention signals efforts from the city’s authorities to limit the local currency’s moves within its HK$7.75 to HK$7.85 per US dollar trading band. Heavy sales of the local dollar by
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC, 台積電) revenue jumped 48 percent last month, underscoring how electronics firms scrambled to acquire essential components before global tariffs took effect. The main chipmaker for Apple Inc and Nvidia Corp reported monthly sales of NT$349.6 billion (US$11.6 billion). That compares with the average analysts’ estimate for a 38 percent rise in second-quarter revenue. US President Donald Trump’s trade war is prompting economists to retool GDP forecasts worldwide, casting doubt over the outlook for everything from iPhone demand to computing and datacenter construction. However, TSMC — a barometer for global tech spending given its central role in the
The Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) yesterday met with some of the nation’s largest insurance companies as a skyrocketing New Taiwan dollar piles pressure on their hundreds of billions of dollars in US bond investments. The commission has asked some life insurance firms, among the biggest Asian holders of US debt, to discuss how the rapidly strengthening NT dollar has impacted their operations, people familiar with the matter said. The meeting took place as the NT dollar jumped as much as 5 percent yesterday, its biggest intraday gain in more than three decades. The local currency surged as exporters rushed to
RSS