Wistron Corp (緯創), the world’s third-biggest contract notebook maker, yesterday said it expected notebook shipments to be flat this quarter from last quarter, after the company said its third-quarter net profit grew 6.16 percent to NT$1.55 billion (US$53.1 million), or NT$0.71 per share.
For next year, Wistron chairman Simon Lin (林憲銘) said that the outlook for notebooks would remain bleak, but that shipments for the company’s other products, such as desktop PCs, tablets, handset devices and LCD TVs, would increase from this year.
In the third quarter, notebook sales accounted for 65 percent of Winston’s total revenue, while desktop PCs, handset devices and tablets accounted for 9 percent, 6 percent and 3 percent respectively.
Among all the non-notebook products, shipments of tablet computers are forecast to reach 6 million units next year, 1.4 times more than this year’s 2.5 million units, the company said.
In the third quarter, Wistron reported NT$153.28 billion in revenue, down 3.52 percent from NT$158.87 billion in the previous quarter and 7.87 percent from NT$166.37 billion in the same quarter of last year.
Gross margin was 5.21 percent in the third quarter, up from 4.95 percent in the second quarter, and the ratio is expected to increase this quarter, as the company forecast shipments of handset devices, TVs, servers and tablets would rise, Lin said.
For the first three quarters, Wistron’s net profit was NT$4.88 billion, with earnings per share of NT$2.24. Consolidated revenue was NT$489.12 billion and gross margin was 4.83 percent.
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