Contract electronics maker Qisda Corp (佳世達), the manufacturing spinoff of BenQ Corp (明基), swung into the black in the second quarter as more clients placed orders for its monitors and projectors amid the improving economic climate.
The company reported earnings of NT$900 million (US$28 million) in the April-to-June period, or earnings of NT$0.47 per share, compared with a loss of NT$441 million, or minus NT$0.23 a share, in the same period last year.
Revenues in the second quarter increased to NT$22.54 billion from NT$12.3 billion a year ago.
Compared with the first three months, second-quarter earnings saw a drop of 4.7 percent, while revenues showed a rise of 13.9 percent.
Qisda expects stronger momentum in the current quarter with significant shipments to come for tablet PCs and e-readers.
The company is set to introduce two more tablet PCs for clients in the second half of the year, including a 7-inch model and another 9-inch model, executive vice president Hermit Huang (黃裕國) told investors yesterday.
These will join the first model that it started to ship for Dell Inc in May. The five-inch Dell Steak, which doubles as a phone, is competing against Apple Inc’s iPad, but the response to it was lukewarm compared with the iPad.
Meanwhile, Huang said the company expects to see e-reader volumes pick up, with shipments to increase five-fold to as many as 50,000 units a month in the third quarter from the second.
Taoyuan-based Qisda had earlier said it was aiming to ship 400,000 e-readers for the whole year for clients including BenQ.
Huang said the company is expanding its client base to achieve the target.
Shipments of monitors, which took up 68 percent of total sales in the second quarter, are expected to rise nearly 10 percent in the current quarter, Huang said.
Volumes of projectors, accounting for 16 percent in the second quarter, would expand in the range of a percentage in the mid-teens, Huang said.
Meanwhile, he conveyed Qisda CEO Hui Hsiung’s (熊暉) gratitude to the public yesterday for expressions of concern about his ban on leaving the US pending a price-fixing probe.
US District Judge Susan Illston in San Francisco on Tuesday denied Hsiung’s request for a two-day pass to return to Taiwan to participate in yesterday’s investor conference.
Hsiung, a board member of AU Optronics Corp (友達光電), Taiwan’s second-largest flat-screen maker, along with AUO chief executive Chen Lai-juh (陳來助) and vice chairman Chen Hsuan-bin (陳炫彬), were barred from leaving the US pending a trial for price fixing in the flat-panel display industry.
“We regret that there is a huge gap between the facts and the verdict of the prosecutors,” Huang said, adding that it was business as usual for Qisda as Hsiung is still overseeing major decision making via e-mail, phone calls and video conferencing.
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