Lextar Electronics Corp (隆達電子), an LED manufacturing arm of AU Optronics Corp (友達光電), said yesterday its second-quarter earnings surged 63-fold from the first quarter and rose 11.97 percent from a year earlier on better product mix, client portfolio and inventory control, as well as rising factory utilization.
Net income reached NT$125.69 million (US$4.19 million) in the second quarter, compared with NT$2 million in the previous quarter and NT$112.25 million in the same quarter last year, the company said in a statement.
Earnings per share was NT$0.3 in the second quarter, compared with zero in the first quarter and NT$0.3 the year before, company data showed.
Second-quarter revenue was NT$2.61 billion, up 19.06 percent from NT$2.19 billion in the prior quarter and 9.89 percent higher than the NT$2.38 billion seen in the previous year.
The company said second-quarter gross margin climbed to 15.1 percent from 11.9 percent in the first quarter, but that was still lower than the 17.4 percent seen a year earlier.
STRONG PERFORMANCE
“The company performed well during the first half of the year after breaking even in the first quarter and seeing both revenue and profit grow further in the second quarter,” chief financial officer and spokesperson Chang Bo-yi (張博儀) said in a statement issued by the firm.
In the first half of the year, the company reported a net income of NT$127.69 million, expanding 235.5 percent from NT$38.06 million of the same period last year. Earnings per share rose to NT$0.3 from NT$0.1 over the period, the company’s data showed.
Chang attributed the good results to strong demand for both LED backlight products and LED lighting items, which helped lift Lextar’s factory utilization rate to about 80 percent in the second quarter, from 70 percent in the first quarter.
EPISTAR
Epistar Corp (晶元光電), the nation’s largest LED chipmaker, also released its second-quarter results yesterday, showing that it swung into a net profit of NT$377.13 million in the April-to-June quarter from a net loss of NT$515.2 million in the January-to-March quarter.
The company reported a net profit of NT$737.96 million a year earlier.
Based on the company's stock exchange filing issued late last night, earnings per share were NT$0.44 in the second quarter, compared with a net loss per share of NT$0.6 in the first quarter and earnings of NT$0.86 per share the year before. Gross margin also improved to 15.37 percent from minus 3.87 percent in the previous quarter.
In the first half, the company's revenue totaled NT$9.81 billion, down 21 percent from NT$12.42 billion in the previous year.
However, investment losses at Huga Optotech Inc (廣鎵光電) and Tekcore Co (泰谷光電) dragged down Epistar's first-half performance, posting a net loss of NT$138.06 million in this period, or a net loss of NT$0.16 per share, compared with a net profit of NT$1.09 billion, or earnings per share of NT$1.27, for the same period of last year, company data showed.
Both Lextar’s and Epistar's results came after LED chipmaker Epileds Technologies Inc (光鈜科技), which is 30 percent owned by metal-casing maker Catcher Technology Co (可成科技), reported earlier that its net income jumped 196 percent sequentially to NT$52.64 million in the second quarter and earnings per share rose 2.9 times to NT$0.52.
Shares in Lextar rose by the 7 percent daily limit to close at NT$27.15 and Epileds also increased by the limit to NT$26.25 yesterday, while Epistar rose 0.33 percent to NT$60.9.
Other LED-related stocks also rose yesterday, compared with a decline of 0.06 percent on the benchmark TAIEX.
Everlight Electronics Co (億光電子) rose 1.52 percent to NT$49.95 and Formosa Epitaxy Inc (璨圓光電) climbed 0.49 percent to NT$20.45. Genesis Photonics Inc (新世紀光電) was up 2.39 percent to NT$23.55, and Tekcore increased 1.14 percent to NT$13.35, stock exchange data showed.
Separately, Opto Tech Corp (光磊科技), a local maker of LED components, has secured a five-year, NT$2 billion syndicated loan from 10 local banks led by Taiwan Cooperative Bank (合作金庫銀行).
SYNDICATED LOAN
The syndicated loan, which Opto Tech said it planned to use for debt repayment and capital enhancement purposes, was oversubscribed by 1.4 times as lenders were bullish on the growth potential of the country’s LED industry.
This story has been updated since it was first published.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day