Chunghwa Picture Tubes Ltd (CPT, 中華映管), the nation’s No. 3 LCD panel maker, yesterday posted a smaller quarterly loss for the fourth quarter of last year after selling more higher-margin panels for handsets and tablets.
That marked the latest progress in the company’s strategic shift away from the cutthroat PC and TV panel business.
In the fourth quarter, losses narrowed to NT$3.38 billion (US$114 million), compared with a third-quarter loss of NT$3.61 billion and a loss of NT$6.01 billion in the fourth quarter of 2010, the company’s financial statement showed.
Gross margins improved to minus-4.5 percent in the fourth quarter, from minus-9.1 percent in the previous quarter and minus-14.1 percent a year ago.
The improvement “proved that our strategy of focusing on mobile device panels, while cutting production of large [PC and TV] panels, works well,” company president Lin Sheng-chang (林盛昌) told an investor teleconference yesterday.
Revenue from panels used in mobile devices accounted for 67 percent of the company’s total revenue of NT$13.34 billion in the final quarter of last year, up from 37 percent in the fourth quarter of 2010 and from 57 percent in the third quarter, according to the financial statement.
Last year, CPT shipped 480 million LCD panels used in mobile devices like cellular phones, tablets and e-readers, making the Taoyuan-based company the world’s top supplier of such panels.
This year, the company plans to increase that figure by between 20 percent and 25 percent, with extra focus on high-resolution panels outfitted with its smartphone touch sensors, Lin said.
CPT plans to spend NT$2 billion on adjusting existing production lines at its 6G factory.
In the short term, Lin said demand would bottom out this quarter and start to gradually recover from the second quarter.
Smaller rival HannStar Display Inc (瀚宇彩晶) yesterday said its losses improved to NT$1.87 billion in the fourth quarter, compared with a loss of NT$4.08 billion in the fourth quarter of 2010 and losses of NT$2.59 billion in the third quarter.
HannStar is also shifting its capacity to focus on small panels used in handheld devices. Last quarter, mobile device panels accounted for nearly 80 percent of its total shipment of 4.5 million units, according to a statement.
Separately, Chimei Innolux Corp (奇美電子), the nation’s top LCD panel maker, yesterday posted a 33 percent decline in its revenue for last month, at NT$31.19 billion, compared with NT$46.85 billion in December, according to a company statement released yesterday.
Chimei Innolux blamed fewer working days because of the Lunar New Year holiday, which it said delayed shipments that would be reflected in next month’s revenue figures.
Shipments of PC and TV panels plunged 38 percent from 13 million units shipped in December to 8.08 million units last month. Shipments of small-and-medium-sized panels fell 24 percent from 35 million units to 26.5 million units.
China has claimed a breakthrough in developing homegrown chipmaking equipment, an important step in overcoming US sanctions designed to thwart Beijing’s semiconductor goals. State-linked organizations are advised to use a new laser-based immersion lithography machine with a resolution of 65 nanometers or better, the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) said in an announcement this month. Although the note does not specify the supplier, the spec marks a significant step up from the previous most advanced indigenous equipment — developed by Shanghai Micro Electronics Equipment Group Co (SMEE, 上海微電子) — which stood at about 90 nanometers. MIIT’s claimed advances last
ISSUES: Gogoro has been struggling with ballooning losses and was recently embroiled in alleged subsidy fraud, using Chinese-made components instead of locally made parts Gogoro Inc (睿能創意), the nation’s biggest electric scooter maker, yesterday said that its chairman and CEO Horace Luke (陸學森) has resigned amid chronic losses and probes into the company’s alleged involvement in subsidy fraud. The board of directors nominated Reuntex Group (潤泰集團) general counsel Tamon Tseng (曾夢達) as the company’s new chairman, Gogoro said in a statement. Ruentex is Gogoro’s biggest stakeholder. Gogoro Taiwan general manager Henry Chiang (姜家煒) is to serve as acting CEO during the interim period, the statement said. Luke’s departure came as a bombshell yesterday. As a company founder, he has played a key role in pushing for the
EUROPE ON HOLD: Among a flurry of announcements, Intel said it would postpone new factories in Germany and Poland, but remains committed to its US expansion Intel Corp chief executive officer Pat Gelsinger has landed Amazon.com Inc’s Amazon Web Services (AWS) as a customer for the company’s manufacturing business, potentially bringing work to new plants under construction in the US and boosting his efforts to turn around the embattled chipmaker. Intel and AWS are to coinvest in a custom semiconductor for artificial intelligence computing — what is known as a fabric chip — in a “multiyear, multibillion-dollar framework,” Intel said in a statement on Monday. The work would rely on Intel’s 18A process, an advanced chipmaking technology. Intel shares rose more than 8 percent in late trading after the
GLOBAL ECONOMY: Policymakers have a choice of a small 25 basis-point cut or a bold cut of 50 basis points, which would help the labor market, but might reignite inflation The US Federal Reserve is gearing up to announce its first interest rate cut in more than four years on Wednesday, with policymakers expected to debate how big a move to make less than two months before the US presidential election. Senior officials at the US central bank including Fed Chairman Jerome Powell have in recent weeks indicated that a rate cut is coming this month, as inflation eases toward the bank’s long-term target of two percent, and the labor market continues to cool. The Fed, which has a dual mandate from the US Congress to act independently to ensure