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.
Photo: Bloomberg
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.
BUSINESS UPDATE: The iPhone assembler said operations outlook is expected to show quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year growth for the second quarter Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday reported strong growth in sales last month, potentially raising expectations for iPhone sales while artificial intelligence (AI)-related business booms. The company, which assembles the majority of Apple Inc’s smartphones, reported a 19.03 percent rise in monthly sales to NT$510.9 billion (US$15.78 billion), from NT$429.22 billion in the same period last year. On a monthly basis, sales rose 14.16 percent, it said. The company in a statement said that last month’s revenue was a record-breaking April performance. Hon Hai, known also as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), assembles most iPhones, but the company is diversifying its business to
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE: The chipmaker last month raised its capital spending by 28 percent for this year to NT$32 billion from a previous estimate of NT$25 billion Contract chipmaker Powerchip Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp (力積電子) yesterday launched a new 12-inch fab, tapping into advanced chip-on-wafer-on-substrate (CoWoS) packaging technology to support rising demand for artificial intelligence (AI) devices. Powerchip is to offer interposers, one of three parts in CoWoS packaging technology, with shipments scheduled for the second half of this year, Powerchip chairman Frank Huang (黃崇仁) told reporters on the sidelines of a fab inauguration ceremony in the Tongluo Science Park (銅鑼科學園區) in Miaoli County yesterday. “We are working with customers to supply CoWoS-related business, utilizing part of this new fab’s capacity,” Huang said, adding that Powerchip intended to bridge
Microsoft Corp yesterday said that it would create Thailand’s first data center region to boost cloud and artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure, promising AI training to more than 100,000 people to develop tech. Bangkok is a key economic player in Southeast Asia, but it has lagged behind Indonesia and Singapore when it comes to the tech industry. Thailand has an “incredible opportunity to build a digital-first, AI-powered future,” Microsoft chairman and chief executive officer Satya Nadella said at an event in Bangkok. Data center regions are physical locations that store computing infrastructure, allowing secure and reliable access to cloud platforms. The global embrace of AI
Qualcomm Inc, the world’s biggest seller of smartphone processors, gave an upbeat forecast for sales and profit in the current period, suggesting demand for handsets is increasing after a two-year slump. Revenue in the three months ended in June will be US$8.8 billion to US$9.6 billion, the company said in a statement Wednesday. Excluding certain items, earnings will be US$2.15 to US$2.35 a share. Analysts had projected sales of US$9.08 billion and earnings of US$2.16 a share. The outlook signals that the smartphone market has begun to bounce back, tracking with Qualcomm’s forecast that demand would gradually recover this year. The San