Everlight Electronics Co (億光), the nation’s biggest LED chip packager and lighting product provider, on Thursday said its revenue could continue rising this year amid growing demand for non-blue/white LED applications.
“Automotive LED lighting products, sensors used in Internet of Things applications, and fine pixel pitch LED displays will be the main growth engines this year,” Everlight chairman Robert Yeh (葉寅夫) said.
With the firm making inroads into the supply chain of several Asian automakers, it expects orders for high-margin automotive products, especially LED headlights, to increase this year, Yeh said.
In addition, Everlight recently inked agreements with South Korean movie theater operators to supply fine pixel pitch LED displays, he said.
Everlight reported consolidated revenue of NT$29.27 billion (US$926 million) last year, with non-blue/white LED applications accounting for 55 percent of the total, company data showed.
While the sales ratio was higher compared with the previous year’s 40 percent, its impact was smaller because of the low average selling price of blue/white LED lighting products, Yeh said.
The blue/white LED industry has suffered from cutthroat pricing over the past two years, mainly due to an oversupply of upstream LED chips.
Analysts said Everlight might see more moderate pricing pressure this year, backed by an industrywide price increase after Epistar Corp (晶電), the nation’s largest LED chipmaker, in June last year raised its LED chip prices and Chinese LED giant Sanan Optoelectronics Co (三安光電) followed suit in September and again on Friday last week.
As major chipmakers appear to have stopped cutting prices, that bodes well for the blue/white LED industry, Yeh said.
Nonetheless, Everlight would work to improve its cost structure to ensure that chip price hikes would not erode its profitability, he said.
In the first three quarters of last year, Everlight reported a net profit of NT$1.34 billion, up 3.87 percent from the year before.
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