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.
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