Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday posted its first sequential growth in revenue in three months, aided by a recovery in smartphone demand in China.
Revenue expanded 21.4 percent to NT$70.86 billion (US$2.12 billion) last month from December’s NT$58.35 billion, according to a company statement.
On an annual basis, revenue shrank 18.7 percent from NT$87.12 billion.
With demand from “China and emerging markets showing signs of a recovery, we forecast a mild revenue decline for the first quarter of 2016,” TSMC co-chief executive officer Mark Liu (劉德音) told investors last month.
TSMC, which supplies chips for Apple Inc’s iPhone 6 series, expects revenue to fall by between 1.24 percent and 2.71 percent sequentially to between NT$198 billion and NT$201 billion this quarter.
Following the magnitude 6.4 earthquake that hit Tainan, the chipmaker said that day that equipment at its southern plant would be fully restored in two to three days.
The quake damaged wafers in-production at the time, but did not cause any structural damage to the company’s Fab 14 and Fab 6 at the Tainan Science Park, it said.
The company expects wafer shipments this quarter to drop by about 1 percent in the aftermath of the quake.
INNOLUX
In related news, LCD panelmaker Innolux Corp (群創) said that about 85 percent of its production lines at its Tainan plant resumed operation on Saturday last week.
However, it will take about a week more for production to be fully restored, it said in a statement released on Sunday.
The natural disaster along with fewer working days due to the Lunar New Year holidays would reduce revenue this month by a low single digit percentage, the nation’s biggest flat-panel manufacturer said.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
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