Asustek Computer Inc (華碩), the world’s No. 5 PC brand, yesterday said it stopped shipments to Russia to avoid the tumbling ruble, adding that it would maintain its quarterly outlook.
“We stopped shipments two weeks ago due to the ruble’s decline against the US dollar,” Asustek spokesman David Chang (張偉明) told the Taipei Times.
Chang said Asustek will book foreign exchange losses this quarter, but the ruble would have only limited impact on Asustek’s fourth-quarter profitability.
Asustek said quarterly laptop shipments would grow 7.84 percent sequentially to 5.5 million units.
“We will resume shipments to Russia once the ruble stabilizes,” Chang said.
Russia contributes between 5 and 6 percent to Asustek’s total revenues, Chang said.
PC brand Acer Inc (宏碁) reportedly said that it has not decided whether to stop shipments.
Acer spokeswoman Claire Yang (楊琬如) was quoted by Unique Satellite TV (非凡新聞) as saying that products have already shipped.
Asustek shares dropped 0.3 percent to NT$335 yesterday in Taipei trading, while Acer shares jumped 2.91 percent to NT$21.2.
Macronix International Co (旺宏), the world’s biggest NOR flash memory supplier, yesterday said it would spend NT$22 billion (US$699.1 million) on capacity expansion this year to increase its production of mid-to-low-density memory chips as the world’s major memorychip suppliers are phasing out the market. The company said its planned capital expenditures are about 11 times higher than the NT$1.8 billion it spent on new facilities and equipment last year. A majority of this year’s outlay would be allocated to step up capacity of multi-level cell (MLC) NAND flash memory chips, which are used in embedded multimedia cards (eMMC), a managed
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