Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday posted annual growth of almost 41 percent in net profit last quarter after booking NT$6.94 billion (US$231.6 million) in asset gains.
The company’s net profit soared to NT$16.98 billion in the three-month period ending in June, compared with NT$12.06 billion in the same period last year, according to a financial statement released yesterday. The NT$6.94 billion in asset gains is a huge turnaround from a year ago, when Hon Hai posted NT$4.8 billion in asset losses.
“The figures exceeded the market’s expectations,” Fubon Securities Co (富邦證券) analyst Arthur Liao (廖顯毅) said,
Hon Hai’s second-quarter net profit represented a sequential quarterly growth of 3.85 percent from NT$16.35 billion.
Its gross margin fell to 5.8 percent last quarter from the 6.05 percent seen a year ago, but was an improvement from the first quarter’s 5.68 percent.
“It is good to see Hon Hai’s gross margin rise further from the first quarter,” Liao said.
“FIH Mobile Ltd (富智康) played a key role in Hon Hai’s improved quarterly profits,” Liao said.
FIH, Hon Hai’s handset manufacturing arm, had been dragging down earnings until recently.
FIH, which makes smartphones for China’s Xiaomi Corp (小米), on Monday posted US$17.23 million in net profits for the first half of this year, reversing losses of US$224 million the previous year.
Liao said he expects Hon Hai to regain growth momentum as it benefits from sales of Apple Inc’s new iPhone 5S and the low-cost iPhone Mini, to be launched later this year.
He also forecast that Hon Hai would report at least NT$300 billion in monthly revenue for the third and fourth quarters.
Liao maintained that the company’s annual revenue would drop from last year’s NT$3.9 trillion, but that it would decrease by 9 percent instead of the 15 percent he had estimated previously.
Liao yesterday upgraded his rating on Hon Hai stock to “add” from “reduce” and raised his target price to NT$93 from NT$59. The figure implies a 17.57 percent uptick from Hon Hai’s closing price of NT$79.10 yesterday.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
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
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the