E Ink Holdings Inc (元太科技), the world’s largest e-paper display supplier, yesterday said revenue plunged 33 percent last month from October after customer inventory buildup for the Christmas shopping season slowed down.
Revenue fell to NT$3.57 billion (US$118 million) last month, from a historical high of NT$5.33 billion in October. Revenue for last month was 71 percent higher than the previous year.
“To cope with customer demand, E Ink shipped some products originally ordered for November earlier in October, as a result of which November revenues were lower. As of November, E Ink has shipped all products booked for the Christmas holiday season,” E Ink chairman Scott Liu (劉思誠) said in a statement.
“Shipments of e-paper display for the whole year also match [the company’s] expectations,” he added.
Liu said that global e-reader shipments could increase from 10 million units last year to 30 million units this year.
E Ink said LCD shipments were also strong for last month as customers reported strong sales of e-readers and tablets during the Thanksgiving holiday and “Black Friday.”
“This will help boost Christmas sales,” Liu said. “We are optimistic both about the market development of e-readers and tablets in the long term.”
Global shipments of e-readers are expected to increase to 100 million units by 2016, E Ink said, citing the latest forecast by market researcher Jon Peddie Research.
Macquarie Securities said in a research note on Tuesday that it strongly recommended buying E Ink shares, saying that E Ink was likely to be a long-term winner because its customer Amazon is set to take second place in the tablet market with its Kindle Fire tablet, behind Apple Inc’s iPad series, on the back of strong Thanksgiving Day sales.
Macquarie set a stock target price of NT$85, implying a 71 percent upside from E Ink’s closing price of NT$49.8 yesterday.
Meanwhile, TPK Holding Co (宸鴻), which supplies touch panels for Apple Inc’s iPad and iPhone, on Tuesday joined rival Wintek Corp (勝華) in reporting record sales for last month on rising demand.
Consolidated sales rose 11.6 percent month-on-month and 35.6 percent year-on-year to NT$14.9 billion last month, TPK said in a statement.
The company attributed last month’s strong sales performance to an across-the-board rise in demand for touch panels used in smartphones, tablets, e-readers and game consoles for the Thanksgiving Day sales.
In the first 11 months of the year, TPK posted NT$125.84 billion in consolidated sales, up 142.25 percent from a year ago, company data showed.
Smaller rival Wintek reported on Thursday last week that its consolidated sales hit a record NT$9.83 billion last month, up 74.22 percent month-on-month and an increase of 10.97 percent year-on-year.
Additional reporting by Kevin Chen
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