PC maker Asustek Computer Inc (華碩) yesterday reported net income of NT$4.5 billion (US$143.3 million) for the fourth quarter of last year, falling short of market expectations due to massive foreign exchange losses.
The figure represented a 22 percent decline from the previous quarter. On an annual basis, last quarter’s net income plunged 21 percent from a year earlier.
Asustek’s quarterly net income was lower than the NT$5.58 billion estimated by Daiwa Capital Markets Inc analyst Steven Tseng (曾緒良).
Asustek chief financial officer David Chang (張偉明) said the depreciation of the Russian ruble against the US dollar has caused a big impact on the firm’s profitability, which eroded gross margin by 1 percentage point to 12.6 percent last quarter.
“For last quarter alone, we booked NT$713 million in exchange losses,” Chang told an investors’ conference.
To minimize foreign exchange losses, Asustek chief executive officer Jerry Shen (沈振來) said Asustek is adopting several measures, including quoting orders in US dollars rather than local currencies in emerging markets.
Revenue this quarter is expected to grow by a single-digit percentage year-on-year, supported by growing shipments of smartphones, Chang said.
However, the revenue outlook beat Tseng’s forecast of a 1.65 percent annual contraction, as Tseng expected slow seasonal demand and a weakening euro to impact revenue. Europe is expected to contribure 30 to 35 percent to the PC brand’s revenue.
This quarter, shipments of PCs are expected to decline 11.11 percent sequentially to 5.6 million units from 6.3 million units, due to seasonally weak demand, Shen said.
Shipments of mobile devices, including tablets and handsets, are expected to fall 31.5 percent to 5 million units from 7.3 million units last quarter, he said.
Shen expects growth momentum to return next quarter on the back of growing demand and new product launches for notebooks and mobile devices.
This year as a whole, PC shipments are expected to increase 15 percent to 25.87 million units from last year’s 22.5 million units, driven by the new ZenBook series, the two-in-one Transformer Book Chi series and low-cost notebooks, Shen said.
“We expect to see strong growth from ZenBook and Chi starting next quarter,” he added.
Shen said the firm is optimistic that its smartphone business would turn a profit this year, with annual shipments expected to more than double to about 17 million units from last year’s 8.5 million units.
Shen said his optimism was based on growing demand from emerging markets and in Taiwan.
RESERVES ADEQUATE: The central bank governor rejected claims that Taiwan was facing a cash shortage, saying that its financial system had ample savings The New Taiwan dollar’s 3 percent fall this year despite record exports and a widening trade surplus stems from foreign investors cashing in on the local stock market’s technology-driven rally and moving funds overseas, central bank Governor Yang Chin-long (楊金龍) told lawmakers yesterday. The NT dollar has become one of Asia’s weakest-performing major currencies this year. Foreign investors have reaped substantial gains from Taiwan’s surging stock market, prompting them to sell shares and rebalance their portfolios, Yang told a meeting of the legislature’s Finance Committee in Taipei. Their withdrawals have added to downward pressure on the NT dollar, offsetting support
‘ON SCHEDULE’: Chief executive officer Rick Tsai said that TSMC ‘remains our most important partner’ as MediaTek seeks to meet robust customer demand Chip designer MediaTek Inc (聯發科) yesterday said it has secured a second customer for its customized artificial intelligence (AI) accelerator for data centers, while volume production of a second-generation chip for an existing customer is on track for early 2028, potentially easing market concerns about possible delays. This is a new customer and, crucially, not from China, MediaTek said. The remarks were meant to dismiss speculation that ByteDance Ltd (字節跳動), the parent company of TikTok, was the second customer for MediaTek’s new customized AI application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) business. “It is on track, on schedule. We understand there is some noise about the
ROOM TO GROW: The company’s biggest bottleneck is still space, chief financial officer Joseph Tung said, adding that it was scouting existing factories to acquire ASE Technology Holding Co (日月光投控) yesterday raised its annual capital expenditure budget for the third time to US$11.5 billion, driven by expectations that customer demand next year would continue to outpace capacity, particularly for its leading-edge advanced packaging (LEAP) technologies used in artificial intelligence (AI) chips. ASE, the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, plans to add US$1 billion to its US$10.5 billion outlay on capacity expansion. About 60 percent of the US$500 million equipment budget would be allocated for LEAP and 40 percent for mainstream packaging technology capacity, ASE chief financial officer Joseph Tung (董宏思) told an online investors’
A US cruise ship on an around-the-world voyage that touted its cabins as floating homes suspended its three-year journey in Cambodia due to fuel costs, forcing hundreds of passengers to disembark. The MV Odyssey set sail two years ago on a voyage to the seven continents marketed as combining long-term living at sea with global travel. Its operator had offered to “make the Odyssey your permanent home,” with the purchase price of a suite for the lifetime of the vessel starting at about US$230,000. For now, it is docked at the Cambodian port of Sihanoukville on the Gulf of Thailand, with no
RSS