Mobile phone camera lens supplier Largan Precision Co (大立光) yesterday said its revenue might increase this quarter from a year earlier, bolstered by the increasing adoption of dual cameras in smartphones.
“Revenue for this month and next could outpace that of the same period last year due to the rising demand for dual cameras,” Largan chief executive officer Adam Lin (林恩平) told a teleconference, without offering a range of estimated growth.
He added that the company’s plants would continue to run at full capacity this quarter.
The construction of a new plant in Taichung is scheduled to be completed next quarter and could become operational in the third quarter at the earliest, helping to ease a capacity constraint, he said.
While waiting for the new plant, the company is working on improving production yields and efficiency, Lin said.
Lin said he is not satisfied with the production yields for some projects, but added that he believed they would improve this quarter, which should benefit the firm’s gross margin.
Largan’s performance this year will largely depend on the adoption rate of dual cameras in the global smartphone industry and the supply of key components for the product, he said.
Unlike producing single-camera lenses, the assembly of dual cameras requires sensors, actuators and lenses, Lin said, adding that a shortage in any of the key components would affect production.
The company yesterday reported a record net profit of NT$8.44 billion (US$265.58 million), or NT$62.99 per share, for last quarter, up 25.78 percent from NT$6.71 billion a year ago and 24.85 percent from the previous quarter’s NT$6.96 billion.
Gross margin expanded by 10.76 percentage points from a year ago and 2.7 percentage points from the previous quarter to a historic high of 70.66 percent last quarter, while operating margin also set a record of 60.9 percent.
A Largan investor relations official attributed the gross margin improvement to a better product portfolio, larger revenue scale, improving yields and a weaker currency exchange rate.
Despite last quarter’s robust performance, the company’s full-year net profit dropped 6 percent annually to NT$22.72 billion, or NT$169.4 per share, compared with NT$24.15 billion, or NT$180.08 per share, the previous year.
Taiwan’s rapidly aging population is fueling a sharp increase in homes occupied solely by elderly people, a trend that is reshaping the nation’s housing market and social fabric, real-estate brokers said yesterday. About 850,000 residences were occupied by elderly people in the first quarter, including 655,000 that housed only one resident, the Ministry of the Interior said. The figures have nearly doubled from a decade earlier, Great Home Realty Co (大家房屋) said, as people aged 65 and older now make up 20.8 percent of the population. “The so-called silver tsunami represents more than just a demographic shift — it could fundamentally redefine the
The US government on Wednesday sanctioned more than two dozen companies in China, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates, including offshoots of a US chip firm, accusing the businesses of providing illicit support to Iran’s military or proxies. The US Department of Commerce included two subsidiaries of US-based chip distributor Arrow Electronics Inc (艾睿電子) on its so-called entity list published on the federal register for facilitating purchases by Iran’s proxies of US tech. Arrow spokesman John Hourigan said that the subsidiaries have been operating in full compliance with US export control regulations and his company is discussing with the US Bureau of
Businesses across the global semiconductor supply chain are bracing themselves for disruptions from an escalating trade war, after China imposed curbs on rare earth mineral exports and the US responded with additional tariffs and restrictions on software sales to the Asian nation. China’s restrictions, the most targeted move yet to limit supplies of rare earth materials, represent the first major attempt by Beijing to exercise long-arm jurisdiction over foreign companies to target the semiconductor industry, threatening to stall the chips powering the artificial intelligence (AI) boom. They prompted US President Donald Trump on Friday to announce that he would impose an additional
China Airlines Ltd (CAL, 中華航空) said it expects peak season effects in the fourth quarter to continue to boost demand for passenger flights and cargo services, after reporting its second-highest-ever September sales on Monday. The carrier said it posted NT$15.88 billion (US$517 million) in consolidated sales last month, trailing only September last year’s NT$16.01 billion. Last month, CAL generated NT$8.77 billion from its passenger flights and NT$5.37 billion from cargo services, it said. In the first nine months of this year, the carrier posted NT$154.93 billion in cumulative sales, up 2.62 percent from a year earlier, marking the second-highest level for the January-September
RSS