HTC Corp (宏達電), the leading maker of smartphones running on Windows Mobile and Android platforms, yesterday said its second-quarter unaudited net profits were NT$8.64 billion (US$268 million), or NT$11.77 in earnings per share (EPS), thanks to a slew of new phone introductions.
That represented a 32.8 percent rise from NT$6.51 billion, or NT$8.3 a share, in net profit during the corresponding period last year.
Revenues jumped 58.5 percent to a record NT$60.53 billion in the second quarter, from NT$38.2 billion a year earlier, according to the company’s statement.
“The second-quarter earnings result is better than our original guidance, as both June and second-quarter revenues continuously hit record highs,” it said.
In late April, HTC said it expected second-quarter revenues to grow to NT$50 billion and handset shipments to rise 50 percent year-on-year to 4.5 million units.
HTC’s second-quarter profits of NT$8.64 billion were about 15 percent to 20 percent higher than Citigroup’s forecast and its operating margin of 15.2 percent was 130 basis points higher than the US brokerage firm’s expectations.
“After the June sales report, our third-quarter sales forecast seems very achievable. Given HTC’s current order momentum, we expect HTC’s July/August sales to stay at similar levels to June and September sales to go up strongly on new model introductions,” Citigroup Global Markets analyst Kevin Chang (張凱偉) wrote in a client note yesterday.
HTC has gained in momentum especially with a slew of new phone launches in the second quarter. It debuted the Desire, the Legend, the Incredible and the Evo — its first 4G model tailored for the US market.
“For the second half of 2010, we expect HTC’s component tightness to be alleviated ... With order increases at Qualcomm back in the second quarter and the adoption of Sony’s ‘super TFT-LCD’ panel later in the year, we believe HTC’s component shortage problem will be addressed in the second half of the year,” Chang said.
For new products, Chang said he expected to see HTC’s new Windows Mobile 7 model hit the market in October and its first Android 2.2 (Froyo) handset sometime in the September/October timeframe, as September will be a strong month for new product sales.
In yesterday’s note, Citigroup maintained its “buy” rating on HTC stocks with a target price of NT$600 per share, which implies around 21 percent upside from its closing price of NT$495 yesterday on the Taiwan Stock Exchange.
For the whole year, the brokerage firm expects HTC to reach an EPS of NT$40.
HTC said in a separate release yesterday that it has codes of conduct for component suppliers in order to prevent the latter from exploiting labor.
“We have launched aggressive investigations on the labor disputes,” it said. “We visited the suppliers’ sites for inspection on the work environment, labor safety and remuneration packages.”
The statement didn’t single out which suppliers were visited, but in recent months, Young Fast Optoelectronics Co’s (洋華光電) retrenched employees protested that they were out of jobs as HTC cut orders from the touchscreen-sensor maker.
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],”
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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