Quanta Computer Inc (廣達), the world’s top contract laptop maker, yesterday said its sales last month, and in the first quarter, declined from a year earlier because of a decrease in its notebook shipments.
The company said in a filing to the Taiwan Stock Exchange that its consolidated revenue for last month dropped 10.08 percent to NT$70.6 billion (US$2.36 billion) from NT$78.52 billion the previous year, although the figure was up 25 percent from the NT$56.5 billion it reported in February.
In the first three months of the year, Quanta posted a 16.91 percent drop in consolidated revenue to NT$197.3 billion, from NT$237.47 billion during the same period of last year.
NOTEBOOKS
The Taoyuan-based company attributed the quarterly decline to falling notebook shipments in the quarter, which contracted by about 28 percent to 9.7 million units from 13.5 million units the previous year.
Quanta said it would have to wait until June to see if its notebook shipments achieve significant growth, adding that it plans to launch products with new central processing units (CPU) by the end of the current quarter.
Meanwhile, in a separate filing, Pegatron Corp (和碩), an assembler of Apple Inc’s iPhone and iPad products, said its consolidated revenue last month fell for a second consecutive month to NT$64.58 billion.
Though sales last month fell by 5.95 percent from NT$68.67 billion in February due to fewer smartphone shipments, Pegatron’s first-quarter consolidated revenue expanded by 28.92 percent to NT$221.32 billion from NT$171.67 the previous year, the company said.
SHIPMENTS DOWN
Pegatron said its notebook shipments in the first quarter dropped by between 20 percent and 25 percent quarter-on-quarter to about 3 million units, while its desktop and communications product shipments both shrank by between 30 percent and 35 percent quarter-on-quarter.
Separately, Pegatron’s subsidiary CaseTek Holdings Ltd (鎧勝), which supplies metal casings used in Apple’s iPad, yesterday posted 114.53 percent year-on-year growth in first-quarter consolidated revenue.
Casetek said it generated sales of NT$9.79 billion during the January-to-March period.
In March alone, Casetek’s consolidated revenue grew by 87.29 percent to NT$2.8 billion from NT$1.49 billion the previous year, according to a filing to the Taiwan Stock Exchange.
The US dollar was trading at NT$29.7 at 10am today on the Taipei Foreign Exchange, as the New Taiwan dollar gained NT$1.364 from the previous close last week. The NT dollar continued to rise today, after surging 3.07 percent on Friday. After opening at NT$30.91, the NT dollar gained more than NT$1 in just 15 minutes, briefly passing the NT$30 mark. Before the US Department of the Treasury's semi-annual currency report came out, expectations that the NT dollar would keep rising were already building. The NT dollar on Friday closed at NT$31.064, up by NT$0.953 — a 3.07 percent single-day gain. Today,
‘SHORT TERM’: The local currency would likely remain strong in the near term, driven by anticipated US trade pressure, capital inflows and expectations of a US Fed rate cut The US dollar is expected to fall below NT$30 in the near term, as traders anticipate increased pressure from Washington for Taiwan to allow the New Taiwan dollar to appreciate, Cathay United Bank (國泰世華銀行) chief economist Lin Chi-chao (林啟超) said. Following a sharp drop in the greenback against the NT dollar on Friday, Lin told the Central News Agency that the local currency is likely to remain strong in the short term, driven in part by market psychology surrounding anticipated US policy pressure. On Friday, the US dollar fell NT$0.953, or 3.07 percent, closing at NT$31.064 — its lowest level since Jan.
Hong Kong authorities ramped up sales of the local dollar as the greenback’s slide threatened the foreign-exchange peg. The Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) sold a record HK$60.5 billion (US$7.8 billion) of the city’s currency, according to an alert sent on its Bloomberg page yesterday in Asia, after it tested the upper end of its trading band. That added to the HK$56.1 billion of sales versus the greenback since Friday. The rapid intervention signals efforts from the city’s authorities to limit the local currency’s moves within its HK$7.75 to HK$7.85 per US dollar trading band. Heavy sales of the local dollar by
The Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) yesterday met with some of the nation’s largest insurance companies as a skyrocketing New Taiwan dollar piles pressure on their hundreds of billions of dollars in US bond investments. The commission has asked some life insurance firms, among the biggest Asian holders of US debt, to discuss how the rapidly strengthening NT dollar has impacted their operations, people familiar with the matter said. The meeting took place as the NT dollar jumped as much as 5 percent yesterday, its biggest intraday gain in more than three decades. The local currency surged as exporters rushed to
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