AU Optronics Corp (AUO, 友達光電) is expected to report that it turned a profit in the second quarter of this year after a recovery in the global flat-screen market, analysts said yesterday.
They said the company could report a net profit of between NT$500 million and NT$1 billion (US$16.7 million and US$33.4 million) for the period from April to last month on better-than-expected sales for the quarter.
The flat-panel maker is scheduled to hold an investors’ conference today to release its second-quarter results.
On July 9, the company announced that consolidated sales for the second quarter rose 19.2 percent from the first quarter to NT$112.34 billion on better-than-expected shipments of TV panels, and small and medium-sized screens.
The firm’s second-quarter sales were also up 18 percent from the same period a year earlier, the company said.
Ahead of today’s investors’ conference, shares of AUO rose 2.34 percent to close at NT$10.95 with 56.02 million shares changing hands on the Taiwan Stock Exchange, while the benchmark index closed up 0.97 percent at 8,163.55 points.
Analysts said AUO’s core flat-panel operations turned profitable in the first quarter, but losses incurred in its solar energy division plunged the company into the red once more.
They said that while its solar energy operations remained unprofitable in the second quarter, the losses narrowed, which boosted the firm’s overall bottom line for the period.
Local rival Innolux Corp (群創光電) is expected to report a profit for the second quarter in a row after turning profitable in the first quarter, snapping a 10-quarter losing streak, analysts said, adding that the company could report about NT$3 billion in net profit for the period from April to last month.
In the first quarter of the year, Innolux posted earnings per share of NT$0.19, compared with NT$1.75 in losses per share recorded in the fourth quarter of last year.
Shares of Innolux rose 1.14 percent to close at NT$13.35 on trading volume of 19.13 million shares in Taipei yesterday.
Despite the likelihood of reporting a profitable second quarter, analysts said that the two major Taiwanese flat-panel makers are facing falling TV screen prices this month and that the trend of weakening prices could continue into next month due to inventory adjustments after buyers aggressively built up their inventory levels.
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],”
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
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