Parade Technologies Ltd (譜瑞), which is the sole supplier of embedded DisplayPort (eDP) solutions for Apple Inc’s iPad Air and iPad Mini, yesterday reported record-high sales for last month.
Parade’s consolidated sales hit NT$565.89 million (US$19.17 million) last month, up 13.47 percent month-on-month and 60.84 percent year-on-year, the Neihu District (內湖), Taipei-based company said in a filing with the Taiwan Stock Exchange. The figure beat the market consensus by 10 percent to 15 percent and Yuanta Securities Corp (元大證券) said Parade could easily beat its fourth-quarter sales guidance of between US$46 million and US$50 million, given that it has posted combined sales of US$36.13 million for the past two months.
However, the company’s cumulative revenue for the first 11 months of the year — NT$3.66 billion — was down 18.97 percent from the same period last year.
Parade is a fabless semiconductor company that specializes in the design and sale of high-speed signal transmission interface solutions. Its eDP technology is being increasingly used in notebook PCs, tablets and all-in-one desktop PCs to enable graphics processors to better interface with display panels.
The company’s shares soared by the daily limit of 7 percent to end at NT$193 yesterday on the GRETAI Securities Market, before the release of last month’s sales figure. The GRETAI index rose 0.09 percent.
Nonetheless, Parade’s shares have declined 12.47 percent in the past three months along with those of many Apple suppliers in Taiwan, as investors remain wary about the US company’s strategy to diversify its suppliers, as well as being concerned that the slowing growth of its shipments will have a negative impact on the whole supply chain.
Yuanta analyst Steve Huang (黃柏璁) yesterday said Parade would be less affected by these structural issues than most supply-chain firms because of its position as the sole supplier of eDP solutions and the increasing penetration of the technology in non-Apple notebooks, tablets and smartphones.
“Parade’s unique technology and intellectual property protection allow it to combat threats from new suppliers, while abundant new addressable markets for non-Apple clients enable it to diversify away from the risk associated with having a single client,” Huang said in a note to clients.
In addition, the average selling price accretion caused by the transition from eDP1.2 transmitters (which have a unit price of US$1.5 to US$2) to eDP1.3 transmitters (which sell for between US$3 and US$4), as well as to scalable intrapanel interface solutions (that are priced at between US$5 and US$7) mean that Parade can fight Apple’s slowing shipment growth, he said.
Yuanta forecast that the company’s sales will drop by between 5 percent and 15 percent next quarter from this quarter due to a higher comparison base and slow seasonal demand.
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