Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), which assembles Apple Inc’s iPhones and iPads, yesterday reported record-high net profits of NT$130.53 billion (US$4.16 billion) for last year, or NT$8.85 per share, thanks to strong demand for Apple’s new products.
That represented growth of 22.34 percent from NT$106.7 billion in the previous year.
Hon Hai’s net profit last quarter also hit an all-time high of NT$56.71 billion, or NT$3.84 per share.
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The company’s net profit last year surpassed Yuanta Securities Investment Consulting Co’s (元大投顧) estimate of NT$127.41 billion and Daiwa Securities’ estimate of NT$126.49 billion.
Gross margin for last year rose to 6.92 percent from the previous year’s 6.44 percent, filings with the Taiwan Stock Exchange showed.
Annual gross margin fell short of Yuanta’s estimate of 7 percent.
Yuanta said the firm’s quarterly sales of nearly NT$1.5 trillion for last quarter was 10 percent higher than its forecast.
Yuanta added that it believes Hon Hai’s Apple-related sales revenues reached a new high of 60 percent last quarter, which boosted the firm’s quarterly performance.
The market watcher forecast Hon Hai’s annual revenues this year to grow 11.56 percent from last year’s NT$4.21 trillion to NT$4.69 trillion.
Yuanta analyst Vincent Chen (陳豊丰) however, said that he foresees a potential downside risk as rival iPhone assembler Pegatron Corp (和碩) is expected to gain more iPhone orders from Apple.
“Hon Hai’s earning next year [2016] may be limited, as we expect Apple to assign Pegatron a higher iPhone allocation. Plus, we currently do not see any other meaningful growth drivers for Hon Hai that could offset that risk from this trend,” Chen said in a note released on March 19.
Separately, Quanta Computer Inc (廣達), which assembles Apple’s latest products — the Apple Watch and the 12-inch MacBook — yesterday reported net income of NT$5.41 billion for last quarter, down 1.4 percent from a year ago.
The company’s net profits for all of last year rose 1.4 percent to NT$18.88 billion from the prior year, or NT$4.9 per share, Quanta said in a statement.
Benefiting from the weak New Taiwan dollar against the US dollar during the previous quarter, the company reported foreign exchange gains of NT$3.54 billion, almost tripling the prior quarter’s NT$1.22 billion.
Gross margin for the last quarter increased 0.7 percentage points to 4.56 percent from the prior year, according to filings with the Taiwan Stock Exchange.
Quanta board yesterday approved a cash dividend of NT$4 per share based on last year’s net profits, which translate into a payout ratio of 81.63 percent, marking the highest payout ratio in Quanta’s history.
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