Wistron Corp (緯創), the nation’s third-largest notebook contract manufacturer, yesterday said its revenue hit a record NT$66.27 billion (US$2.2 billion) last month, fueled by robust demand from China ahead of the Lunar New Year buying spree.
The figure was up 0.25 percent from November and 22.36 percent from a year ago, according to a company statement.
Wistron attributed the strong performance to notebook inventory buildup in China before the holiday, as well as steady demand from other clients.
Wistron said it shipped 9.4 million portable computers in the fourth quarter, with full-year shipments hitting a record 31.55 million units, up 14.7 percent from the previous year, according to the statement.
That meant the company surpassed its goal of shipping at least 30 million laptop computers last year.
For the whole of last year, Wistron saw total revenue expand 7.08 percent year-on-year to NT$658.24 billion, also marking a historical high.
Wistron did not provide a revenue guidance for this year, but its rival, Pegatron Corp (和碩), said a day earlier that it was looking forward to 40 percent growth this year.
Pegatron, a manufacturing arm of PC vendor Asustek Computer Inc (華碩), has yet to release last year’s revenue results, which analysts expect to be near NT$500 billion.
“Last year was special because of the natural disasters, as well as the economic problems in the United States and Europe,” Pegatron chairman Tung Tsu-hsien (童子賢) said at the company’s year-end party on Tuesday.
However, “our company’s revenue in 2011 increased 13 percent from 2010, and we expect higher growth this year,” the chairman added.
Tung said Pegatron’s revenue could rise by 40 percent this year as the company has diversified its customer base.
The Chinese-language Economic Daily News yesterday quoted Pegatron chief executive Jason Cheng (程建中) as saying that first-quarter revenue could drop by a double-digit percentage from the fourth quarter because of slow demand and a shortage of hard disk drives, but its sales momentum should pick up from the second quarter onward.
The company is upbeat about this year’s prospects because it has become the second assembler — in addition to Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) — of Apple Inc’s iPhone 4S, and is also likely to become an assembler for the upcoming “iPad 3,” the paper said.
Pegatron has also secured tablet and notebook orders from Toshiba Corp, Acer Inc (宏碁) and Lenovo Group Ltd (聯想), which would fuel its revenue growth this year, it added.
Wistron shares closed flat on the Taiwan Stock Exchange yesterday at NT$39, while those of Pegatron soared by the 7 percent daily limit to close at NT$35.60.
Additional reporting by CNA
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