Catcher Technology Co (可成科技), which makes metal casings for Apple Inc’s MacBook Air notebook and iPad mini tablet, is likely to receive new smartphone orders early next year, Barclays Capital Securities Taiwan Ltd said.
The new orders will be for Apple’s new iPhone 5S and Samsung Electronics Co’s premium Galaxy series during the first half of next year, Barclays analysts led by Dale Gai (蓋欣山) and Kirk Yang (楊應超) said in a note released on Thursday.
Catcher, which also supplies metal casings for HTC Corp’s (宏達電) smartphones, is likely to benefit from the growing trend of leading smartphone vendors adopting metal casings in their phones. So far, Samsung is the only top-five smartphone brand which is not using metal casing for its products.
Photo: Bloomberg
However, that could change. South Korea’s Electronic Times newspaper reported on Aug. 30 that Samsung might build a production line at its plant in Gumi, about 260km southeast of Seoul, to produce handset casing from magnesium and aluminium by the end of this year. The world’s largest smartphone brand is likely to apply metal casing to its premium models set to be released early next year, according to a report on the paper’s Web site.
In their note, Barclays analysts said that based on their checks with supply chain companies,
Samsung is close to a final decision on the adoption of metal casings in at least one of its high-end smartphone models from the second quarter next year.
“Our checks suggest Catcher has been qualified as one of the major sources on the total metal casing smartphone volumes at 10 [million to] 30 million next year from Samsung,” the analysts wrote.
“The final order allocation is to be confirmed in early first quarter 2014, subject to price bids by approved vendors,” they added.
Pauline Chen (陳柏齡), an analyst at Credit Suisse AG’s Taipei securities branch, said in a note to her clients on Sept. 4 that if Samsung decides to use metal casing for its flagship model next year, it is very likely to outsource some orders to non-South Korean suppliers in order to meet the requirements for volume and quality.
Chen said Catcher could also gain more orders from Apple next year as the US company is likely to adopt a new strategy to add new electronics manufacturing service (EMS) providers, including Wistron Corp (緯創) and Inventec Corp (英業達), to reduce risks for new products.
“We believe that the news should be positive for independent metal casing suppliers such as Catcher or Ju Teng International Holdings Ltd (巨騰) as these ‘new’ EMS suppliers could prefer to team up with independent casing makers, over their competitors’ casing subsidiaries,” she wrote.
Moreover, Catcher’s increased iPhone orders could help it offset the order losses from HTC, according to Barclays analysts, who predicted a 20 percent annual sales decline for HTC next year from this year.
“The increasing likelihood that Catcher will see iPhone 5S order gains in the first half of 2014 will likely completely offset HTC-related risks,” they said.
Shares of Catcher closed at NT$155 on Wednesday. Barclays reiterated its “overweight” rating on the company’s shares, with a target price of NT$179.
France cannot afford to ignore the third credit-rating reduction in less than a year, French Minister of Finance Roland Lescure said. “Three agencies have downgraded us and we can’t ignore this cloud,” he told Franceinfo on Saturday, speaking just hours after S&P lowered his country’s credit rating to “A+” from “AA-” in an unscheduled move. “Fundamentally, it’s an additional cloud to a weather forecast that was already pretty gray. It’s a call for lucidity and responsibility,” he said, adding that this is “a call to be serious.” The credit assessor’s move means France has lost its double-A rating at two of the
AI BOOST: Although Taiwan’s reliance on Chinese rare earth elements is limited, it could face indirect impacts from supply issues and price volatility, an economist said DBS Bank Ltd (星展銀行) has sharply raised its forecast for Taiwan’s economic growth this year to 5.6 percent, citing stronger-than-expected exports and investment linked to artificial intelligence (AI), as it said that the current momentum could peak soon. The acceleration of the global AI race has fueled a surge in Taiwan’s AI-related capital spending and exports of information and communications technology (ICT) products, which have been key drivers of growth this year. “We have revised our GDP forecast for Taiwan upward to 5.6 percent from 4 percent, an upgrade that mainly reflects stronger-than-expected AI-related exports and investment in the third
Mercuries Life Insurance Co (三商美邦人壽) shares surged to a seven-month high this week after local media reported that E.Sun Financial Holding Co (玉山金控) had outbid CTBC Financial Holding Co (中信金控) in the financially strained insurer’s ongoing sale process. Shares of the mid-sized life insurer climbed 5.8 percent this week to NT$6.72, extending a nearly 18 percent rally over the past month, as investors bet on the likelihood of an impending takeover. The final round of bidding closed on Thursday, marking a critical step in the 32-year-old insurer’s search for a buyer after years of struggling to meet capital adequacy requirements. Local media reports
RARE EARTHS: The call between the US Treasury Secretary and his Chinese counterpart came as Washington sought to rally G7 partners in response to China’s export controls China and the US on Saturday agreed to conduct another round of trade negotiations in the coming week, as the world’s two biggest economies seek to avoid another damaging tit-for-tat tariff battle. Beijing last week announced sweeping controls on the critical rare earths industry, prompting US President Donald Trump to threaten 100 percent tariffs on imports from China in retaliation. Trump had also threatened to cancel his expected meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) in South Korea later this month on the sidelines of the APEC summit. In the latest indication of efforts to resolve their dispute, Chinese state media reported that
RSS