TPK Holding Co (宸鴻), a major supplier of touch modules for Apple Inc’s iPhone smartphones and iPad tablet computers, yesterday saw its shares rise by the daily limit following a new deal signed with Intel Corp on Tuesday.
Shares rose 6.9 percent to NT$441.5 on the Taiwan Stock Exchange. So far this year, TPK shares have risen 11.91 percent, versus a 0.23 percent fall on the TAIEX over the same period.
On Tuesday, Intel said it had signed agreements with TPK, Cando Corp (達鴻), HannsTouch Solution Inc (和鑫) and Wintek Corp (勝華) to ensure adequate capacity to meet the expected demand for touch-enabled Ultrabooks in the upcoming years.
“Intel’s comment that is has secured touch panel capacity from TPK, Cando, Wintek and HannsTouch could further boost touch-enabled Ultrabook proliferation,” Credit Suisse analyst Jerry Su (蘇厚合) said yesterday in a note.
Su said TPK would benefit from a diversification of its product mix by teaming up with the US chip giant, while at the same time lowering its dependence on Apple.
“Our checks at the [Computex] exhibition suggests TPK is the biggest winner from touch-enabled Ultrabooks,” he wrote in the note, adding that the company is also expected to benefit from the launch of Microsoft’s upcoming Windows 8 operating system.
Last month, TPK said it was aiming to raise its customer base from 30 to 40 companies to reduce risk.
Apple contributed about 76 percent of the company’s revenue of NT$40.48 billion (US$1.35 billion) in the first quarter of the year. In April, the company told investors that it expected Apple to account for less than 40 percent of its revenue next year.
TPK yesterday said its consolidated revenue increased 3.9 percent to NT$12.324 billion last month from April, and the figures represented an increase of 10.3 percent from the same period last year, according to a company statement.
In the first five months of the year, TPK’s accumulated revenue totaled NT$64.63 billion, up 37.96 percent from a year earlier, the company’s data showed.
Separately, local electronics retailer Synnex Corp (聯強國際) on Tuesday said revenue rose 14 percent to NT$24.19 billion last month from a year ago, with consumer electronics sales expanding the fastest. Sales of consumer electronics increased 43 percent to NT$3.32 billion, according to a company statement.
That was followed by an annual increase of 27 percent in information technology sales to NT$12.91 billion.
In the first five months of the year, Synnex’s combined revenue totaled NT$120.9 billion, slightly lower than the NT$121.3 billion posted last year, according to the statement.
SECOND-RATE: Models distilled from US products do not perform the same as the original and undo measures that ensure the systems are neutral, the US’ cable said The US Department of State has ordered a global push to bring attention to what it said are widespread efforts by Chinese companies, including artificial intelligence (AI) start-up DeepSeek (深度求索), to steal intellectual property from US AI labs, according to a diplomatic cable. The cable, dated Friday and sent to diplomatic and consular posts around the world, instructs diplomatic staff to speak to their foreign counterparts about “concerns over adversaries’ extraction and distillation of US AI models.” Distillation is the process of training smaller AI models using output from larger, more expensive ones to lower the costs of training a powerful new
Shares of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) have repeatedly hit new highs, but an equity analyst said the stock’s valuation remains within a reasonable range and any pullback would likely be technical. The contract chipmaker’s historical price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio has ranged between 20 and 30, Cathay Futures Consultant Co (國泰證期) analyst Tsai Ming-han (蔡明翰) told Central News Agency. With market consensus projecting that TSMC would post earnings per share of about NT$100 (US$3.17) this year, supported by strong global demand for artificial intelligence (AI) applications, and the stock currently trading at a P/E ratio of below 25, Tsai said the valuation
The artificial intelligence (AI) boom has triggered a seismic reshuffling of global equity markets, with Taiwan and South Korea muscling past European nations one by one. With its stock market now valued at nearly US$4.3 trillion, Taiwan surpassed the UK, Europe’s biggest market, earlier this month, data compiled by Bloomberg showed. South Korea is about US$140 billion away from doing the same. The tech-heavy Asian markets have shot past Germany and France in the past seven months. The shift is largely down to massive gains in shares of three companies that provide essential hardware for AI: Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電),
The US Department of Commerce last week ordered multiple chip equipment companies to halt shipments of certain tools to China’s second-largest chipmaker, Hua Hong Semiconductor Ltd (華虹半導體), its latest action to slow the country’s development of advanced chips, two people familiar with the matter said. The department sent letters to at least a handful of companies informing them of restrictions on tools and other materials destined for two Hua Hong facilities US officials believe make China’s most sophisticated chips, the people said. Top US chip equipment companies Lam Research Corp, Applied Materials Inc and KLA Corp, each of which has significant