MediaTek Inc (聯發科), the nation’s biggest handset chip designer, yesterday posted a second consecutive monthly decline in revenue for last month, but analysts said the company was still on track to hit its second-quarter forecast, driven by strong demand for its smartphone chips.
Revenue shrank 3.64 percent last month to NT$7.65 billion (US$256 million), from NT$7.94 billion, which slightly surpassed Credit Suisse’s forecast of NT$7.51 billion. That was an increase of 16.1 percent from NT$6.59 billion in May last year.
That brought the company’s combined revenue in April and last month to NT$15.6 billion, reaching about 67.1 percent of the NT$23.24 billion projected by Credit Suisse for the second quarter, according to a report released yesterday.
“MediaTek’s smartphone business is finally driving enough momentum to offset feature phones [weakness] and drive results on track to at least the midpoint of the guidance,” Credit Suisse analyst Randy Abrams said in the report.
The Hsinchu-based company said on April 27 that revenue would grow by between 14 percent and 20 percent to NT$22.4 billion this quarter, compared with last quarter’s NT$19.62 billion, of which 20 percent came from smartphone chips.
Abrams said that MediaTek would ship 19 million smartphone chips this quarter, almost doubling the 10 million last quarter, slightly exceeding his previous forecast.
“Several whitebox smartphone vendors displaying phones at Computex this week are using MediaTek across their line-up, with the MT6573 in lower-end ... handsets and some higher-end US$130 to US$160 [phones] carrying the MT6575 and now running working versions of Android 4.0,” he said in the report.
Abrams expects growth momentum to stay healthy for MediaTek through the high season in the third quarter and he expected less impact on the company from global macroeconomic weakness than other sectors as emerging markets, where smartphone penetration rate is low, would fuel MediaTek’s growth.
Abrams retained his “neutral” rating on MediaTek, with a target price of NT$260.
Separately, the world’s largest chip packager, Advanced Semiconductor Engineering Inc (日月光半導體), yesterday reported its best monthly revenue in six months last month. Last month’s revenue grew 5.2 percent month-on-month from April’s NT$14.87 billion. That was up 1.3 percent from NT$15.44 billion in the same period last year.
Memorychip maker Macronix International Co Ltd (旺宏電子) yesterday said revenue jumped 13.5 percent to NT$2.05 billion last month from NT$1.8 billion in April. Compared with NT$2.12 billion revenue a year ago, last month’s results slipped 3.2 percent.
Macronix counts Japanese video game console maker Nintendo Co as one of its major clients.
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