Siliconware Precision Industries Co (SPIL, 矽品精密), the world’s No. 2 chip packaging service provider, yesterday reported annual growth of 33.3 percent in net income to NT$3.01 billion (US$96.44 million) for last quarter, primarily due to foreign exchange gains.
That brought the company’s net profit last year to NT$11.73 billion, hitting its highest level since 2008. The figure almost doubled from NT$5.89 billion in 2013.
Gross margin was 26.9 percent in the last quarter, beating the company’s previous guidance of between 23 percent and 25 percent, SPIL investment relations officer Janet Chen told an investor’s conference call.
“The depreciation of the NT dollar against the US dollar contributed a lot to the gross margin, boosting it by 1.5 percentage points last quarter,” Chen said.
Revenue this quarter is expected to fall to between NT$20 billion and NT$21 billion due to seasonal factors, SPIL chairman Bough Lin (林文伯) said.
That is to mark a sequential decline of between 1.87 percent and 6.54 percent from last quarter’s NT$21.4 billion, mostly in line with Deutsche Bank AG’s about 5 percent quarterly contraction forecast.
“We expect modest inventory adjustments this quarter due to a healthy inventory level in the market,” Deutsche Bank analyst Michael Chou (周立中) said in a note released on Jan. 6.
Gross margin is expected to fall between 24 percent and 26 percent this quarter from 26.9 percent last quarter, Lin said.
By product line, the demand for computer applications is expected to be weak this quarter compared with last quarter, Lin said, adding that demand for communications applications is to be flat.
Lin said he is optimistic on the possibility of the company’s monthly revenue being more than NT$8 billion sometime in the first half of this year, meaning quarterly revenue would reach NT$2.4 billion.
Lin said the industry is expected to grow between 7 percent and 8 percent annually this year in revenue, citing unspecified market researchers’ forecasts.
“Our goal is to outgrow the industry,” Lin said.
Communications applications, which account for 64 percent of SPIL’s revenue, are expected to continue to be the firm’s main growth driver this year, Lin said, citing strong demand for smartphone ICs.
Lin said that Internet of Things-related products are to become the “next big thing” driving the growth of semiconductor industry in the next few years, sharing the view with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (台積電) chairman Morris Chang (張忠謀).
Increasing demand for automotive electronics is to be another driving force, Lin said.
Lin said the firm plans to spend NT$14.5 billion on capital expenditures this year, down from last year’s record-high NT$21.1 billion.
About 48 percent of this year’s spending is to be on increasing capacity, mostly for advanced packaging services, he said.
Separately, SPIL plans to complete the construction of its third plant in China by the end of September, which is scheduled to begin operations next year, Lin said.
The new plant is to offer advanced packaging services, he said.
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