Quanta Computer Inc (廣達), which assembles MacBooks and Apple Watches for Apple Inc, yesterday said it expects operations this quarter to grow from last quarter and business in the second half to outpace the first half.
“I foresee notebook shipments and non-notebook business expanding by at least 10 percent from last quarter,” Quanta vice chairman C.C. Leung (梁次震) told a news conference at the company’s headquarters in Linkou District, New Taipei City.
Supported by clients’ planned launches of new notebooks and wearable products, Leung said Quanta’s operations in the second half would be better than the first half.
Leung said useful innovations and the right prices could spur demand for notebooks, although there are market noises about the outlook for the products.
It is widely believed that Apple is to introduce new industrial designs of its existing notebook product lines and the next generation of Apple Watch later this year.
In addition, Leung said Quanta foresees that its cloud-computing segment will continue to grow this year from last year, fueled by rising demand from clients for servers.
Company chairman Barry Lam (林百里) said the production value of the global cloud-computing server sector is expanding 30 percent annually, bringing great business potential, and Quanta is participating in the industry trend.
On the back of the rising server business and Quanta’s investments in other non-notebook products, the company foresees sales contribution from non-notebook business increasing by up to 50 percent from last year’s 40 percent, Leung said.
The company’s guidance came after the firm reported better-than-expected net profit for last quarter, despite falling notebook shipments.
Quanta saw its net profit contract 1.5 percent year-on-year to NT$3.61 billion (US$110.96 million) last quarter, while its notebook shipments, which accounted for more than 50 percent of its total revenue, plunged 15.15 percent to 8.4 million units in the January-to-March period.
On a quarterly basis, the world’s largest contract notebook maker’s net income plummeted 26.9 percent from the prior quarter’s NT$4.95 billion, company data showed.
Earnings per share stood at NT$0.94, similar to last year’s NT$0.95, but dropped from NT$1.28 per share in the previous quarter.
Quanta chief financial officer Elton Yang (楊俊烈) attributed the smaller-than-expected decline in net profit to the improvement in the server business, which offset the weakness in its notebook segment.
The company yesterday reported sales of NT$68.18 billion for last month, gaining 1 percent year-on-year, but dropping 9.31 percent from the previous month’s NT$75.18 billion, according a company stock filing.
Quanta’s revenue fell 2.62 percent to NT$265.54 billion in the first four months from last year’s NT$272.71 billion in the same period, the filing said.
KEEPING UP: The acquisition of a cleanroom in Taiwan would enable Micron to increase production in a market where demand continues to outpace supply, a Micron official said Micron Technology Inc has signed a letter of intent to buy a fabrication site in Taiwan from Powerchip Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp (力積電) for US$1.8 billion to expand its production of memory chips. Micron would take control of the P5 site in Miaoli County’s Tongluo Township (銅鑼) and plans to ramp up DRAM production in phases after the transaction closes in the second quarter, the company said in a statement on Saturday. The acquisition includes an existing 12 inch fab cleanroom of 27,871m2 and would further position Micron to address growing global demand for memory solutions, the company said. Micron expects the transaction to
Vincent Wei led fellow Singaporean farmers around an empty Malaysian plot, laying out plans for a greenhouse and rows of leafy vegetables. What he pitched was not just space for crops, but a lifeline for growers struggling to make ends meet in a city-state with high prices and little vacant land. The future agriculture hub is part of a joint special economic zone launched last year by the two neighbors, expected to cost US$123 million and produce 10,000 tonnes of fresh produce annually. It is attracting Singaporean farmers with promises of cheaper land, labor and energy just over the border.
US actor Matthew McConaughey has filed recordings of his image and voice with US patent authorities to protect them from unauthorized usage by artificial intelligence (AI) platforms, a representative said earlier this week. Several video clips and audio recordings were registered by the commercial arm of the Just Keep Livin’ Foundation, a non-profit created by the Oscar-winning actor and his wife, Camila, according to the US Patent and Trademark Office database. Many artists are increasingly concerned about the uncontrolled use of their image via generative AI since the rollout of ChatGPT and other AI-powered tools. Several US states have adopted
A proposed billionaires’ tax in California has ignited a political uproar in Silicon Valley, with tech titans threatening to leave the state while California Governor Gavin Newsom of the Democratic Party maneuvers to defeat a levy that he fears would lead to an exodus of wealth. A technology mecca, California has more billionaires than any other US state — a few hundred, by some estimates. About half its personal income tax revenue, a financial backbone in the nearly US$350 billion budget, comes from the top 1 percent of earners. A large healthcare union is attempting to place a proposal before
RSS