Delta Electronics Inc (台達電) yesterday reported a record profit last quarter, thanks to catalysts such as contributions from a newly acquired power system company and improved sales at its power management unit.
However, the nation’s top power supply maker did not offer sales guidance for this quarter, citing a law banning financial forecasts before the completion of fundraising at the end of the year.
Net income climbed to NT$5.89 billion (US$180.2 million) in the third quarter, up 1 percent year-on-year and 55 percent quarter-on-quarter, mainly due to sales contribution from newly bought Eltek ASA and that from its power management segment.
Earnings per share were NT$2.42, compared with NT$2.4 per share in the same period last year and NT$1.55 per share in the prior quarter.
“Eltek benefited Delta’s sales and gross margin performance last quarter,” Delta investor services division manager Rodney Liu (劉致遠) told an investors’ conference in Taipei.
Gross margin was 28.2 percent last quarter, up 0.9 percentage points from last year’s 27.3 percent and 1.2 percentage points from the previous quarter’s 27 percent. It was the highest quarterly gross margin in the firm’s history.
Delta in December last year announced it was to acquire Eltek in a deal totaling US$530 million.
“So far, the acquisition seems to be a good deal,” Delta chairman Yancey Hai (海英俊) said.
As the two companies have different client bases, Delta now has a larger client base and can expand its market, Hai said, adding that Eltek’s sales and profit have remained stable over the past few months.
KGI Securities Investment Advisory (凱基投顧) on Oct. 6 forecast Delta’s sales this quarter might grow 7 percent to NT$57.5 billion from last quarter’s NT$55.9 billion, driven by strong demand for passive components and thermal electric cooing fan products.
The company is also making efforts to improve its financial health after announcing last month its first rights issue in the company’s 45-year history. Delta plans to issue 170.66 million new shares, hoping to raise more than NT$25 billion.
“The move could dilute earnings per share by 7 percent at most, but we can handle it,” Hai said.
Delta’s spokesman Jesse Chou (周志宏) said Delta’s long-term and short-term debt totaled more than NT$40 billion. The firm plans to spend most of the newly raised funds to reduce debt, he said.
The company’s debt ratio is 56 percent and Delta hopes to lower the ratio to about 50 percent.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
MAJOR BENEFICIARY: The company benefits from TSMC’s advanced packaging scarcity, given robust demand for Nvidia AI chips, analysts said ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it is raising its equipment capital expenditure budget by 10 percent this year to expand leading-edge and advanced packing and testing capacity amid strong artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing chip demand. This is on top of the 40 to 50 percent annual increase in its capital spending budget to more than the US$1.7 billion to announced in February. About half of the equipment capital expenditure would be spent on leading-edge and advanced packaging and testing technology, the company said. ASE is considered by analysts