Pegatron Corp (和碩), which makes iPhones and iPads for Apple Inc, expects revenues to hit a record high this year from last year’s NT$1.02 trillion (US$32.63 billion), helped by its strategy of broadening product portfolios, chief executive Jason Cheng (程建中) said yesterday.
“We will keep focusing on our major product lines including communication, information technology and consumer electronics products this year,” Cheng told shareholders during the Taipei-based company’s annual general meeting.
The communication segment is Pegatron’s biggest revenue source, contributing 63 percent of total revenues in the first quarter of this year, while the division that manufactures notebooks accounted for 16 percent.
Pegatron also assembles smartphones for its parent company, Asustek Computer Inc (華碩), which holds a 17.49 percent share in Pegatron.
Pegatron’s consumer electronics segment contributed 12 percent of its total revenue.
Pegatron chairman Tung Tsu-hsien (童子賢) said he foresees the firm’s performance in the second half of this year to be better than the first half on the back of upcoming product launches from the company’s main clients.
“We started to prepare for the peak season,” Tung told reporters after the meeting.
Pegatron’s main client Apple is expected to launch its next-generation iPhone in September, while Asustek’s ZenFone 2 — powered by a Qualcomm Inc processor — and ZenFone Selfie are to hit the market next month.
On the sidelines of a Computex Taipei event on June 2, Cheng told reporters that he is upbeat that the expected launch of Microsoft Corp’s Windows 10 operating system next month would start to drive demand for notebooks.
He told a March 23 investors’ conference that after the slow season in the first and second quarters of the year, Pegatron’s production capacity would be fully utilized for the rest of the year.
Cheng added that Pegatron would complete construction of two new plants in China’s Suzhou (蘇州) and Kunshan (崑山) between the end of this quarter and the beginning of next quarter.
For the firm’s information technology and consumer electronics products, which lag behind the growth momentum of the communication segment, Cheng said the firm plans to deepen its relationships with existing clients while seeking new clients.
Shareholders yesterday approved Pegatron’s proposal to issue a NT$4.1 cash dividend based on last year’s net profits of NT$14.7 billion, or earnings per share of NT$6.24.
The dividend distribution translates into a payout ratio of 65.7 percent and represents a dividend yield of 4.68 percent, based on the stock’s closing price of NT$87.5 yesterday in Taipei trading.
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