Although metal casing manufacturer Catcher Technology Co’s (可成科技) sales last month beat expectations, analysts warned that a capacity constraint might last until next month because of plant suspensions and a worsening labor shortage in China.
Furthermore, the company is facing more headwinds ahead after several of its major clients adjusted their sales forecasts downward recently, Primasia Investment Consultancy Co said yesterday in a note.
Catcher supplies metal casings for Apple Inc’s MacBook Air, HTC Corp’s (宏達電) smartphones and Research In Motion Ltd’s (RIM) PlayBook tablets, among others.
The company, whose factories in Suzhou in China’s Jiangsu Province were partially shut down in October because of environmental disputes, said in a statement yesterday that its consolidated sales last month fell 18.87 percent from a month earlier to NT$2.61 billion (US$86.3 million).
That compares with Primasia Investment’s forecast sales of NT$2.5 billion to NT$2.6 billion, which it cut by 20 percent the previous month because of uncertainty on when Catcher’s factories would resume operations.
In October, Catcher said a partial shutdown of its Suzhou factories could cause a 20 percent fall in sales for the month from the September level and warned that its sales for last month could drop by as much as 40 percent from the September level if the factories remained closed.
However, as the company has begun moving a portion of its machinery in Suzhou to facilities in Suqian, Jiangsu Province, to make up for lost capacity, Catcher saw its October sales fall by a lighter 15.85 percent month-on-month to NT$3.21 billion, while sales last month fell 31.73 percent from September’s figure, company data showed.
On an annual basis, Catcher’s sales last month were up 3.21 percent from the same month last year. Cumulative sales in the first 11 months of the year reached NT$32.6 billion, 68.2 percent higher than a year earlier.
Since the partial shutdown of its Suzhou facilities in early October, Catcher has been installing air-filtering machines, running production tests and negotiating with the government in China. However, the company still could not say when its Suzhou facilities would resume full operations.
“Its restart schedule is behind market expectations of mid--November as Catcher waits for government approval, and we now see this taking place in mid-December,” Primasia Investment said.
“Moreover, an early Lunar New Year holiday may also cause a labor shortage in China starting this month .... Catcher’s profitability in December and January may be impacted by the labor shortage,” Primasia said.
Adding to concerns is the gloomier economic outlook in the US and Europe, which has prompted several of Catcher’s clients to slash their sales forecasts recently.
On Nov. 23, HTC cut its sales forecast for the October-December period to NT$104 billion (US$3.41 billion), from its previous estimated range of NT$125 billion to NT$135 billion. RIM on Friday last week revised downward its earnings and sales guidance for this year because of falling shipments of BlackBerry smartphones and PlayBook tablets.
As such, Primasia expects Catcher’s October-to-December sales to fall by 20 to 25 percent from the third quarter’s NT$10.77 billion, it said.
However, Citigroup Global Markets is more optimistic. It said in a research note that Catcher’s sales may have already hit the bottom last month, as the company had started moving production to other sites and had digested the order backlog from October.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
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
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the
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],”