Taiwan ODM service provider Pegatron Corp (和碩) said yesterday it expects to grow at a -better--than-expected pace this year despite facing stiff challenges after being spun off from Asustek Computer Inc (華碩).
“Although I strongly recognize the hard work of our employees, our performance has been only acceptable over the past two years because of the impact of our split from Asustek,” Pegatron chairman Tung Tsu-hsien (童子賢) said at the company’s year end party.
Asustek announced on Dec. 11, 2009, that it would spin off its manufacturing arm Pegatron by reducing its stake in the company to 25 percent and its capital in the company by 85 percent.
“After working on product design for half a year, our new products have entered the mass production stage. We hope we can showcase the outcome to our shareholders this year,” Tung said.
Pegatron chief financial officer Charles Lin (林秋炭) told reporters on the sidelines of the party that the company’s annual revenue would grow at a higher rate this year than the 12 percent to 15 percent average growth rate forecast for the industry.
Though the first quarter of the year is usually the slowest for ODM service providers, with negative quarter-on-quarter growth fairly common, Lin said Pegatron could actually see revenue grow in the first three months of this year compared with the previous quarter because of increasing demand from clients.
Meanwhile, the company’s TV product shipments are expected to double from 2 million units last year to 4 million this year, Lin said.
Addressing the news that Pegatron could lose orders from Asustek, Lin said he expected the gap to be made up by additional orders from other customers.
According to Digitimes Research, Asustek is cutting its orders to Pegatron and Inventec Corp (英業達) and shifting them to Quanta Computer Inc (廣達).
Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海), which just entered the contract notebook computer manufacturing business last year, could also overtake Pegatron to become the world’s fifth largest ODM service provider, Digitimes said.
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