HTC yesterday said sales last month climbed to NT$29 billion (US$971.49 million), the highest level in 11 months, after the company’s flagship HTC One smartphone generated better-than-expected sales since April.
Sales expanded 48.03 percent to NT$29 billion last month from NT$19.59 billion in April, with the combined sales from April and last month totaling NT$48.59 billion.
HTC last month told investors on a conference call that its new HTC One flagship model had been received positively by the market.
With confidence in the new One, HTC said it aims to increase sales this quarter by 63.55 percent to NT$70 billion from NT$42.8 billion in the first quarter of the year.
The Taoyuan-based company’s goal might be achieved if strong sales growth momentum can be sustained throughout this month.
JPMorgan Securities Ltd projected that HTC’s revenue would grow 75 percent sequentially in the second quarter and by between 15 percent and 20 percent in the third and fourth quarters.
“A strong pipeline of flagship model launches and carrier roll-out may fuel HTC’s upcycle for the rest of the year” JPMorgan analyst Alvin Kwock (郭彥麟) said in a note on Monday.
According to JPMorgan, the activation rate of the new HTC One has been rising week by week since it was launched and that retail stores’ inventory of the smartphone appeared lean.
“The One gets sold out from time to time and requires a few days of pre-ordering lead time,” Kwock said.
“Low inventory could ensure benign pricing in third quarter of the year, unlike the inventory write-down situation witnessed back in 2012,” he added.
HTC delayed the US launch of the One with Verizon Wireless late last month.
However, the US company said on Monday that it would soon start selling the phone.
“It’s coming — the HTC One will be available on the Verizon Wireless 4G LTE network later this summer,” it said on Twitter.
No launch date or prices were disclosed.
Together with a new mid-end smartphone model, allegedly named “M4,” and a second-generation flagship smartphone model Butterfly S, sales of the One by Verizon are expected to fuel HTC’s sales next quarter, JPMorgan said.
In addition, HTC may launch a higher-level new One model called the HTC One Max later this year, Kwock said.
Several telecommunication carriers have revealed that they are very interested in the 5.9-inch product with a unibody casing, Kwock added.
JPMorgan retained its rating for HTC’s shares as “overweight” with a target price of NT$390.
HTC’s share closed down 1.03 percent at NT$287.5 yesterday, underperforming the broader market, which dropped 0.12 percent.
UNCERTAINTIES: Exports surged 34.1% and private investment grew 7.03% to outpace expectations in the first half, although US tariffs could stall momentum The Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER, 中華經濟研究院) yesterday raised its GDP growth forecast to 3.05 percent this year on a robust first-half performance, but warned that US tariff threats and external uncertainty could stall momentum in the second half of the year. “The first half proved exceptionally strong, allowing room for optimism,” CIER president Lien Hsien-ming (連賢明) said. “But the growth momentum may slow moving forward due to US tariffs.” The tariff threat poses definite downside risks, although the scale of the impact remains unclear given the unpredictability of US President Donald Trump’s policies, Lien said. Despite the headwinds, Taiwan is likely
When Lika Megreladze was a child, life in her native western Georgian region of Guria revolved around tea. Her mother worked for decades as a scientist at the Soviet Union’s Institute of Tea and Subtropical Crops in the village of Anaseuli, Georgia, perfecting cultivation methods for a Georgian tea industry that supplied the bulk of the vast communist state’s brews. “When I was a child, this was only my mum’s workplace. Only later I realized that it was something big,” she said. Now, the institute lies abandoned. Yellowed papers are strewn around its decaying corridors, and a statue of Soviet founder Vladimir Lenin
READY TO BUY: Shortly after Nvidia announced the approval, Chinese firms scrambled to order the H20 GPUs, which the company must send to the US government for approval Nvidia Corp chief executive officer Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) late on Monday said the technology giant has won approval from US President Donald Trump’s administration to sell its advanced H20 graphics processing units (GPUs) used to develop artificial intelligence (AI) to China. The news came in a company blog post late on Monday and Huang also spoke about the coup on China’s state-run China Global Television Network in remarks shown on X. “The US government has assured Nvidia that licenses will be granted, and Nvidia hopes to start deliveries soon,” the post said. “Today, I’m announcing that the US government has approved for us
UNIFYING OPPOSITION: Numerous companies have registered complaints over the potential levies, bringing together rival automakers in voicing their reservations US President Donald Trump is readying plans for industry-specific tariffs to kick in alongside his country-by-country duties in two weeks, ramping up his push to reshape the US’ standing in the global trading system by penalizing purchases from abroad. Administration officials could release details of Trump’s planned 50 percent duty on copper in the days before they are set to take effect on Friday next week, a person familiar with the matter said. That is the same date Trump’s “reciprocal” levies on products from more than 100 nations are slated to begin. Trump on Tuesday said that he is likely to impose tariffs
RSS