Compal Electronics Co (仁寶電腦) yesterday reported a 53.68 percent plunge in net profit for last quarter to NT$2.01 billion (US$65.3 million), and blamed slow PC demand and foreign exchange losses for the drop.
The world’s No. 2 laptop computer maker made NT$4.34 billion in net profit in the fourth quarter of last year, missing Yuanta Securities Investment Consulting Co’s (元大投顧) estimate of NT$2.16 billion, or NT$0.5 per share. Earnings per share were NT$0.47, the lowest in the past four quarters.
Compal booked a currency exchange loss of NT$544 million for last quarter mainly because of the appreciation of the New Taiwan dollar against the US dollar, company investor relations official Tina Chang (張妍婷) told an investors’ conference.
Gross margin last quarter improved to 4.32 percent, from last year’s 4.3 percent and the previous quarter’s 3.96 percent.
Compal president Ray Chen (陳瑞聰) said notebook shipments last month unexpectedly dropped 28 percent to 2.6 million units from the previous month, mainly because of early shipments in February and March and weaker-than-expected demand.
Compal has cut its notebook shipment forecast for this quarter to a double-digit percent growth from 9.3 million units last quarter, Chen said.
It had predicted sequential growth in the high double digits.
“We expect notebook shipments to pick up significantly from next quarter following the launch of the Windows 10 operating system in July,” Chen said.
The non-notebook segment, which includes smart devices and TVs, is also expected to grow by a double-digit percentage in shipments this quarter from the previous quarter on the back of clients’ new smartphone projects, he said.
Compal said it shipped 32.8 million non-notebook products last year, 20 million units of which were handsets.
“However, it would be a pressure to extend the strong growth momentum of non-notebook products into the second half of this year,” Chen said, citing a possiblely different product mix in the next few quarters.
As part of the effort to extend Compal’s reach in the industrial PC market, the company plans to buy shares in at least two small industrial computing companies before the end of this year, Chen said.
Compal purchased a minority stake in Avalue Technology Inc (安勤) last year as part of its strategy to enter the industrial computing hardware and software sector.
“Our goal is to merge the smaller scale of industrial computing companies into one large company, and generate annual revenues of NT$15 billion to NT$20 billion by 2017,” Chen said.
Yuanta Securities Investment Consulting Co (元大投顧) on April 20 forecast Compal’s consolidated revenues this quarter would grow by 9.6 percent to NT$217.32 billion from NT$198.3 billion last quarter.
Compal shares fell 3.2 percent to NT$27.2 in Taipei trading yesterday.
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