Shares of Largan Precision Co (大立光), a leading handset camera lens supplier, yesterday surged by 7.4 percent to close at a historic high of NT$4,050 in Taipei trading, the highest share price on the Taiwan Stock Exchange.
A total of 1.6 million Largan shares were traded during yesterday’s session, with buy orders of 14,000 shares and sell orders of 7,000 shares still waiting to be executed, Taiwan Stock Exchange data showed.
“Largan’s business is expected to grow this quarter from the same period a year ago, supported by its Chinese clients launching new smartphones,” Yuanta Securities Investment Consulting Co (元大投顧) analyst Jeff Pu (蒲得宇) said by telephone.
Largan’s Chinese clients, such as Huawei Technologies Co (華為), Oppo Mobile Telecommunications Corp (歐珀移動) and Xiaomi Corp (小米), are set to release new models that features dual cameras from March to May, Pu said.
The increasing dual camera adoption rate and the specification migration of camera lens would benefit Largan’s shipments and average selling prices, Pu said.
The company’s production utilization rate is also expected run at full capacity this quarter, he said.
Pu has raised his target share price for Largan from NT$4,700 to NT$5,000.
Yuanta is the third brokerage to revise its target price for Largan shares to NT$5,000 after Citigroup Global Markets and Morgan Stanley.
Largan yesterday reported that last month’s revenue rose 38.87 percent year-on-year and 4.58 percent month-on-month to NT$5.44 billion (US$170 million).
Morgan Stanley said in a client note yesterday that December sales were slightly ahead of its forecast and beat the usual seasonal trend, with annual sales growth finally returning to positive territory for the first time since December 2015.
"This suggests Largan's year-on-year sales should stay strong into the first quarter of 2017, thanks to tight supply and ongoing yield improvement off low base in 2016. We believe this should serve as a key catalyst to share price improvement," Morgan Stanley analyst Jasmine Lu (呂智穎) wrote.
During the October-to-December quarter, Largan's revenue rose 2 percent to NT$15.72 billion from a year earlier. However, the firm's combined revenue for the whole of last year plunged 13.45 percent to NT$48.35 billion, data showed.
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