Powertech Technology Inc (力成), a memorychip tester and packager, yesterday said it expects revenue this quarter to grow mildly from the previous quarter, while gross margin could also improve quarterly, driven by continued robust demand for DRAM chips for mobile and graphics devices.
“The overall market may face a slowdown in demand this quarter, but thanks to main clients’ demand for DRAM because of new smartphone launches, Powertech could still grow from last quarter,” company president JY Hung (洪嘉鍮) told an investors’ conference, without providing a sales estimate for this quarter.
Powertech chairman Tsai Du-kung (蔡篤恭) said the company’s DRAM business for mobile devices was good in the first six months, although Chinese and South Korean smartphone makers faced softer-than-expected demand in the period.
“We have very diversified smartphone clients,” Tsai said.
“We expect the demand for DRAM for mobile devices to remain strong in the second half and to drive Powertech’s overall revenue performance,” he said.
Hung said growing demand for servers worldwide has brought higher orders for advanced DRAM chips used in high-end servers, which might also boost the company’s revenue this quarter.
The company expects sales contributions from its overall DRAM business to increase to about 45 percent this quarter from last quarter’s 36 percent, Hung said.
Hung said the company foresees orders growing this quarter in its flash memory business — which accounted for 35 percent of Powertech’s total revenue last quarter — on the back of the increasing demand for high-end smartphones and solid-state drives.
However, logic IC business, which contributed 29 percent of Powertech’s sales last quarter, is expected to be flat from last quarter, Hung said.
The logic IC business is expected to grow significantly in the final quarter, fueled by clients’ new projects, he said.
Last quarter, net income dropped 3.1 percent to NT$1.18 billion (US$37.37 million) from a year earlier, mainly due to higher operating expenses due to wage raises, Powertech said.
On a quarterly basis, profit jumped 15.68 percent, the company said.
Earnings per share were NT$1.2 last quarter, up from last year’s NT$1.18 and the prior quarter’s NT$1.01, it said.
Powertech’s gross margin last quarter was 18.7 percent, an improvement from 18.1 percent last year and 17.7 percent the previous quarter on better product mix, Hung said.
“We will maintain this product portfolio and increase the utilization of production capacity to keep improving gross margin this quarter,” he said.
Powertech shares surged 3.81 percent to NT$51.8 in Taipei trading yesterday, ahead of the firm’s investors’ conference, outperforming the TAIEX, which gained 0.3 percent.
UNCERTAINTIES: Exports surged 34.1% and private investment grew 7.03% to outpace expectations in the first half, although US tariffs could stall momentum The Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER, 中華經濟研究院) yesterday raised its GDP growth forecast to 3.05 percent this year on a robust first-half performance, but warned that US tariff threats and external uncertainty could stall momentum in the second half of the year. “The first half proved exceptionally strong, allowing room for optimism,” CIER president Lien Hsien-ming (連賢明) said. “But the growth momentum may slow moving forward due to US tariffs.” The tariff threat poses definite downside risks, although the scale of the impact remains unclear given the unpredictability of US President Donald Trump’s policies, Lien said. Despite the headwinds, Taiwan is likely
When Lika Megreladze was a child, life in her native western Georgian region of Guria revolved around tea. Her mother worked for decades as a scientist at the Soviet Union’s Institute of Tea and Subtropical Crops in the village of Anaseuli, Georgia, perfecting cultivation methods for a Georgian tea industry that supplied the bulk of the vast communist state’s brews. “When I was a child, this was only my mum’s workplace. Only later I realized that it was something big,” she said. Now, the institute lies abandoned. Yellowed papers are strewn around its decaying corridors, and a statue of Soviet founder Vladimir Lenin
UNIFYING OPPOSITION: Numerous companies have registered complaints over the potential levies, bringing together rival automakers in voicing their reservations US President Donald Trump is readying plans for industry-specific tariffs to kick in alongside his country-by-country duties in two weeks, ramping up his push to reshape the US’ standing in the global trading system by penalizing purchases from abroad. Administration officials could release details of Trump’s planned 50 percent duty on copper in the days before they are set to take effect on Friday next week, a person familiar with the matter said. That is the same date Trump’s “reciprocal” levies on products from more than 100 nations are slated to begin. Trump on Tuesday said that he is likely to impose tariffs
Japan is heavily investing in a new kind of ultra-thin, flexible solar panel that it hopes will help it meet renewable energy goals while challenging China’s dominance of the sector. Pliable perovskite panels are perfect for mountainous Japan, with its shortage of flat plots for traditional solar farms. A key component of the panels is iodine, something Japan produces more of than any country but Chile. The push faces some obstacles: Perovskite panels contain toxic lead, and, for now, produce less power and have shorter lifespans than their silicon counterparts. Still, with a goal of net zero by 2050 and a desire to
RSS