Morgan Stanley has cut its forecast for notebook (NB) shipments in the fourth quarter because of the continuing shortage of hard disk drives (HDD) resulting from floods in Thailand.
The US investment bank trimmed its fourth-quarter notebook shipments for the top five original design manufacturers (ODM) by 3 percent to 40.1 million units from the previous forecast of 41.1 million units, according to an e-mailed report dated on Sunday.
The five ODMs are Quanta Computer Inc (廣達), Compal Electronics Inc (仁寶), Wistron Corp (緯創), Pegatron Corp (和碩) and Inventec Corp (英業達).
The results represent a drop of 2 percent quarter-on-quarter and 2 percent from a year earlier, despite better-than-expected notebook shipments last month, Morgan Stanley said.
Last month, notebook shipments from the top five ODMs totaled 14.64 million units, 2 percent above Morgan Stanley’s forecast of 14.3 million units.
“HDD shortages emerged as the major risk in the fourth quarter. NB ODMs have noted HDD shortages may affect December shipments if the resumption of HDD production is slower than expected,” Morgan Stanley said. “Our checks with motherboard makers in Taiwan also suggest a similar trend that the impact from HDD shortage may become more material in December and there is high uncertainty on HDD supply entering the first quarter of 2012.”
“Whether NB OEMs [original equipment manufacturers] will raise their NB prices due to HDD price hikes also posts uncertainty on the demand side,” it said.
The bank has cut its forecast for Compal’s fourth--quarter shipments by 10 percent to about 8.9 million units because of weaker shipment outlook ahead.
It also trimmed shipment forecasts for both Quanta and Inventec by 1 percent to be in line with the companies’ guidance.
Meanwhile, Morgan Stanley raised Pegatron’s fourth-quarter shipment expectation by 3 percent to 4.05 million units because of its better results for last month and lifted those for Wistron slightly by 1 percent to 8.3 million units.
“We expect Pegatron and Wistron’s fourth-quarter shipments to grow in the double digits on a year-on-year basis, the strongest among ODMs,” Morgan Stanley said.
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