MediaTek Inc (聯發科), the nation’s biggest handset chip designer, yesterday posted its best monthly revenue in more than three-and-a-half years on the back of growing demand for its smartphone and tablet computer chips.
Revenue surged 35.25 percent to NT$13.22 billion (US$436 million) last month, compared with NT$97.73 billion in June, according to a company statement.
Last month’s figure was the strongest the MediaTek has posted since January 2010 and represented a 43 percent annual increase from NT$9.25 billion.
“Strong July [revenue] sets a good tone for the third quarter,” Credit Suisse AG analyst Randy Abrams said in a research note yesterday.
Last week, MediaTek issued a conservative guidance of sequential revenue growth of 5 percent to 13 percent for this quarter, but Abram said the latest sales data meant the company was likely to achieve revenue growth “above its midpoint range.”
MediaTek expects revenue to grow to between NT$34.9 billion and NT$37.6 billion in the current quarter from last quarter’s NT$33.28 billion, while forecasting that its gross margin would be about 43.5 percent this quarter.
The company also forecast that its smartphone chip shipments would increase by more than 18 percent sequentially to as high as 65 million units this quarter, from 55 million last quarter.
Abrams attributed MediaTek’s strength to a strong ramp-up of its dual and quad-core chipsets for WCDMA and TD-SCDMA phones and maintained his “outperform” rating on the stock, with a target price of NT$400.
Daiwa Capital Markets analyst Eric Chen (陳慧明) said the company was very likely to raise its forecast for this quarter’s revenue and gross margin after smartphone chip shipments grew at a much faster pace than expected last month.
The company likely shipped between 19 million and 20 million units last month, exceeding Chen’s estimate of between 15 million and 16 million. Chen retained his “buy” rating on MediaTek.
MACRONIX
Separately, memorychip maker Macronix Electronics Corp (旺宏電子) yesterday said its revenue rose 1.4 percent to NT$1.81 billion last month from June’s NT$1.78 billion. That represented an annual decline of 32.4 percent from NT$2.67 billion.
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