Shares of Hermes Microvision Inc (漢微科), a leading Taiwan-based semiconductor inspection tool and equipment supplier, moved higher yesterday after the company gave an optimistic assessment of sales growth for the year, dealers said.
Due to the strong sales growth forecast, many investors with high hopes of the company’s net profit continuing to a new high this year rushed to pick up Hermes shares, helping the stock extend gains seen in the past few sessions, dealers said.
Hermes shares climbed 5.71 percent to end at NT$1,760. The stock retained its title as the second-most expensive stock in the local market, trailing only smartphone camera lens supplier Largan Precision Co (大立光), which fell 1.51 percent to NT$2,615.
The index of the over-the-counter market, where Hermes shares are traded, closed up 0.87 percent.
“The rosy assessment in sales growth for 2015 cheered investors and sparked the buying,” MasterLink Securities (元富投顧) analyst Tom Tang (湯忠謙) said. “Many have also been pleased by a significant increase in net profit a year earlier.”
At an investor conference on Wednesday, Hermes said that due to strong demand from clients in the global integrated circuit industry, the company remains upbeat about sales growth for the year, expecting revenue to increase by 25 percent to 35 percent from a year earlier.
The forecast beat the previous market prediction of a 20 percent to 30 percent year-on-year sales increase.
Hermes said that as its major customers have postponed their orders to the second quarter from the first quarter, the firm’s sales for the first quarter could fall about 50 percent from a quarter earlier.
However, a sales growth pattern could return in the April-to-June period and growth momentum is expected to accelerate in the second half of this year, Hermes said.
Last year, Hermes posted NT$7.21 billion (US$229 million) in consolidated sales, up 35 percent from a year earlier, while its net profit rose 38 percent year-on-year to NT$3.24 billion, a record high.
Hermes CEO Jack Jau (招允佳) said that the US is Hermes’ largest buyer, accounting for 45 percent of the company’s total sales, ahead of Taiwan with 33 percent, South Korea with 11 percent, China with 5 percent and Japan with 2 percent.
Hermes recorded a gross margin of 70 percent last year, unchanged from a year earlier.
“The high gross margin shows that Hermes has competitive production technology, which has created a high threshold that many competitors fail to surmount. That’s why the company is able to secure a large number of orders from world-class chipmakers like Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (台積電),” Tang said.
E-beam inspection tools are the company’s major products.
According to MasterLink Securities, the company has an 85 percent global market share for the tools.
“Many foreign institutional investors favor Hermes shares. To my knowledge, they have bought 166,200 Hermes shares in the past month,” Tang said.
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