E Ink Holdings Inc (元太科技) yesterday said it lost NT$603 million (US$19.96 million) last quarter due to seasonally weak demand.
The firm, which supplies e-paper displays for Amazon.com Inc’s Kindle e-reader series, was in the red in the first three quarters last year, but made net income of NT$1.01 billion in the fourth quarter.
Last quarter’s losses widened from losses of NT$490 million in the first quarter of last year.
The world’s biggest e-paper display supplier reported NT$2.96 billion in revenue last quarter, almost half that of the previous quarter.
“The numbers were not great,” Yuanta Investment Consulting (元大投顧) analyst George Chang (張家麒) said in a research note.
He had forecast that E Ink would lose NT$516 million last quarter.
E Ink posted an operating loss of NT$1.21 billion for last quarter, which also exceeded Chang’s estimate of NT$760 million.
As the company is likely to take some extra reserves in its ongoing restructuring, E Ink may break even or significantly shrink its operating loss in the near future, Chang said.
Separately, touchpanel maker Young Fast Optoelectronics Co (洋華光電), which counts Samsung Electronics Co as its top client, posted an improved quarterly loss of NT$212 million for last quarter from a quarter ago.
Young Fast lost NT$1.31 billion in the fourth quarter last year.
It said in March that prices would stabilize this quarter after a 20 percent annual decline last year.
The company made a net profit of NT$177 million in the first three months of last year.
On Wednesday, rival Wintek Corp (勝華) reported narrowed quarterly losses of NT$1.5 billion, compared with losses of NT$3.83 billion in the fourth quarter.
That marked the eighth straight quarterly losses for Wintek.
Losses widened from the NT$840 million loss posted in the first quarter of last year. Wintek has said it expects operations to improve significantly in the second half of this year from the seasonally slow first half.
From India to China to the US, automakers cannot make vehicles — not that no one wants any, but because a more than US$450 billion industry for semiconductors got blindsided. How did both sides end up here? Over the past two weeks, automakers across the world have bemoaned the shortage of chips. Germany’s Audi, owned by Volkswagen AG, would delay making some of its high-end vehicles because of what chief executive officer Markus Duesmann called a “massive” shortfall in an interview with the Financial Times. The firm has furloughed more than 10,000 workers and reined in production. That is a further blow
MOBILE SMART: The Dimensity 1200 is 22 percent better in terms of performance than its predecessor, and 25 percent more power-efficient, the handset chip designer said MediaTek Inc (聯發科) yesterday unveiled its premium 5G processors — the Dimensity 1200 and Dimensity 1100 — as it vies for a larger slice of the world’s rapidly growing 5G smartphone market. Manufactured using Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (台積電) 6-nanometer process technology, the Dimensity 1200 processor performs 22 percent better than the previous generation Dimensity 1000+ processor, and is 25 percent more power-efficient, MediaTek said. Chinese smartphone brands Xiaomi Corp (小米) and Realme Mobile Telecommunications (Shenzhen) Co (銳爾覓移動通信) are to be the first adopters of the latest Dimensity chips, the companies said during a virtual media briefing. Xiaomi plans to equip its first
Answering to a reported request by Germany to help address a chip shortage in its auto industry, the Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA) yesterday said that it was in talks with domestic chip suppliers. Foreign media over the weekend reported that German Minister of Economic Affairs Peter Altmaier had sent a request to Taipei to ask Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) to cooperate more closely with German automakers to provide microchips and sensors, to bridge a shortage that has emerged over the past few months. The MOEA said that it had not yet received the request and could therefore not elaborate
FOCUS ON FOUNDRIES: An analyst said that some investors would be disappointed because they were expecting a larger announcement of a partnership with TSMC Intel Corp’s incoming chief executive officer Pat Gelsinger on Thursday pledged to regain the company’s lead in chip manufacturing, countering growing calls from some investors to shed that part of its business. “I am confident that the majority of our 2023 products will be manufactured internally,” Gelsinger said. “At the same time, given the breadth of our portfolio, it’s likely that we will expand our use of external foundries for certain technologies and products.” He plans to provide more details after officially taking over the CEO role on Feb. 15, but Gelsinger was clear that Intel is sticking with its once mighty