Compal Electronics Inc (仁寶電腦), the world’s second-largest contract laptop maker, yesterday reported its first-quarter net profit dropped 29 percent year-on-year due to a decrease in notebook shipments.
Net profit fell to NT$1.36 billion (US$46.11 million) in the first three months, or earnings per share of NT$0.31, from NT$1.9 billion in the same period of last year, the company’s statement showed.
Foreign exchange losses amounted to NT$239 million in the first quarter, which the company attributed to a “misarrangement” of asset allocations.
Compal said it had reviewed and readjusted its investment portfolio, hoping to avoid foreign exchange losses this quarter.
“Global tablet shipments are growing faster than expected,” Compal president Ray Chen (陳瑞聰) said of the falling notebook shipments at an investors’ conference.
“While we expect Microsoft Corp’s participation in promoting Windows 8-powered PCs will help drive up growth in worldwide notebook shipments, we forecast global growth rate in Windows 8 notebooks will be less than that of tablets in the second half of the year,” Chen said.
Chen said Microsoft plans to launch new Windows 8-powered products in the third quarter of the year, while Compal’s clients Acer Inc (宏碁) and Asustek Computer Inc (華碩) are also scheduled to ship new series of Windows 8 all-in-one computers, laptops and tablets.
However, Compal’s total PC products are expected to contract by a low single-digit percentage this quarter from last quarter, Chen said.
Chen did not provide a target for notebook shipments for this quarter, saying only that he remains upbeat that the firm’s total tablet and notebook shipments could achieve double-digit growth this year, driven mostly by strong tablet demand.
Compal has set a shipment target of between 8 million and 10 million units for its tablet products, and will continue increasing their contribution to the company’s sales quarter by quarter, it said.
The company also aims to ship between 4 million and 5 million TVs this quarter, almost double that of the January-to-March period.
In a filing to the Taiwan Stock Exchange, Compal reported consolidated revenue of NT$57.12 billion for last month, down 11.8 percent month-on-month, but up 13.1 percent year-on-year.
In the first four months of the year, Compal’s accumulated revenue totaled NT$224.35 billion, up 5.7 percent from the NT$212.25 billion it generated during the same period of last year.
Compal has decided to distribute a cash dividend of NT$1 per common share on earnings made last year. Based on Compal’s share price of NT$19.1 yesterday, the yield rate is about 5.23 percent.
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
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
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],”
MAJOR BENEFICIARY: The company benefits from TSMC’s advanced packaging scarcity, given robust demand for Nvidia AI chips, analysts said ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it is raising its equipment capital expenditure budget by 10 percent this year to expand leading-edge and advanced packing and testing capacity amid strong artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing chip demand. This is on top of the 40 to 50 percent annual increase in its capital spending budget to more than the US$1.7 billion to announced in February. About half of the equipment capital expenditure would be spent on leading-edge and advanced packaging and testing technology, the company said. ASE is considered by analysts