ASMedia Technology Inc (祥碩科技), which designs data storage controller chips, yesterday said it expected business to weaken this quarter on seasonal factors, despite a good outlook for next year on growing adoption of its high-speed data storage.
Demand “does not look as healthy as we imagined,” ASMedia president Lin Che-wei (林哲偉) told reporters on the sideline of an investors’ conference ahead of the company’s initial public offering (IPO) scheduled for next month.
“Tablets and smartphones continue to be the bestsellers,” Lin said.
Storage chips used in PCs and PC motherboards accounted for more than 76 percent of ASMedia’s revenue of NT$1.31 billion in the first three quarters of the year.
FOURTH QUARTER
“The fourth quarter will be a slower [period] than the third quarter,” Lin said.
“Last year, we also experienced a similar seasonal pattern,” he said.
ASMedia was founded by Asustek Computer Inc (華碩電腦) president Jerry Shen (沈振來) eight years ago and now is a 49 percent owned subsidiary of Asustek.
About 30 percent of ASMedia revenue comes from Asustek orders.
The company has hired Yuanta Polaris Securities Co (元大寶來證券) to help underwrite 4.99 million shares on the nation’s main stock market.
ASMedia shares rallied 1.84 percent to NT$82.09 on the Emerging Stock Market yesterday.
EXPECTATIONS
Gross margin is expected to grow to 40 percent this year, Lin said. Last year, gross margin plunged to 38.8 percent from 44.8 percent in 2010.
ASMedia posted NT$207 million (US$7.11 million), or NT$4.03 per share, in net profits in the first three quarters of this year.
Last year, net profits surged 3.5-fold to NT$216.89 million, or NT$5.08 a share, from NT$46.89 million, or NT$1.17 a share, in 2010.
Lin was optimistic about the company’s operations next year, saying: “We hope next year will be a growing year.”
GROWTH DRIVERS
The uptake of advanced USB3.0 and Intel Corp’s thunderbolt technologies will drive ASMedia’s growth in the second half of next year, helped by the sale of Ultrabooks and PCs running Microsoft’s new Windows 8 operating system, Lin said.
New clients and new chips would also be growth drivers, he said.
ASMedia counts the world’s major PC brands and the world’s top three hard-drive makers, including Toshiba Corp, as its clients.
Lin also said an intellectual property infringement lawsuit filed by Taiwanese chip designer VIA Technology Inc (威盛) had not affected the company’s business or future projects, because ASMedia had fully communicated about the situation with it clients.
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],”
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
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained