Vanguard International Semiconductor Corp (世界先進) yesterday said it expects sales this quarter to be flat or decline slightly from last quarter’s NT$5.29 billion (US$161 million) due to continued weak demand from clients.
“The overall demand this quarter is expected to improve mildly from last quarter, but the demand is still soft due to clients’ high inventory levels,” Vanguard chairman and president Fang Leuh (方略) told reporters after an investors’ conference in Taipei.
Vanguard, which manufactures controller chips for LCD panels, foresees sales this quarter to reach between NT$5.1 billion and NT$5.4 billion, down 3.59 percent or up 2.07 percent from the previous quarter, Fang said.
The firm again trimmed its capital expenditure for this year to NT$1.6 billion from its estimate last quarter of NT$1.7 billion, Fang said.
Under the adjusted capital expenditure plan, Vanguard’s monthly production is expected to fall 1 percent quarterly to 181,000 wafers, he added.
While the factory utilization rate is relatively low due to an expected decline in wafer shipments, Fang said the firm has adopted several measures to reduce costs, such as shutting down idle machines.
In light of the lower factory utilization rate, the company’s gross margin is forecast to slide by about 1 percentage point to 26 percent from the previous quarter’s 27.2 percent, Fang said.
Operating margin is expected to decline to 15.5 percent from 16.9 percent in the third quarter, he said.
Although clients’ inventories have not yet returned to a healthy level, the speed of inventory correction this quarter is faster than in the previous quarter, which is a good sign for the industry, Fang said.
“Clients might complete their inventory correction no later than the first quarter of next year,” he said.
Looking forward, Fang said the outlook for the industry next year is likely to be better than this year.
“However, it all depends on the actual end demand in the markets,” he said.
Fang’s remarks came after Vanguard reported its weakest quarterly net income of NT$851 in the past 11 quarters as customers worked with an inventory glut.
Net profit plunged 35.8 percent from last year’s NT$1.32 billion and 19.9 percent from the previous quarter’s NT$1.06 billion.
Earnings per share were NT$0.51, compared with NT$0.8 a year earlier and NT$0.64 the previous quarter.
Vanguard shares grew 0.24 percent to NT$41.6 yesterday, outperforming the TAIEX, which lost 1.1 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
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],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained