Casetek Holdings Ltd (鎧勝), a metal casing supplier for Apple Inc’s iPads and MacBooks, yesterday reported a 50 percent annual decline in net profit to NT$1.08 billion (US$34.36 million) for last quarter, dragged down by falling global demand for tablets.
This brought the company’s cumulative net profit to NT$2.8 billion, or NT$8.26 per share, half of the NT$5.63 billion, or NT$16.59 per share, it made in the previous year, the company’s data showed.
“The declining global demand for tablets and a client’s delayed launch of its new notebook computers affected Casetek’s performance on both revenues and profit last year,” chief financial officer Jonathan Chang (張昭平) told an investors conference at the company’s headquarters in Taipei.
Casetek, which is a subsidiary of iPhone assembler Pegatron Corp (和碩), saw its gross margin fall by 6.2 percentage points to 19.3 percent last year, while its operating margin contracted by 6.4 percentage points annually to 10.2 percent, the data showed.
Casetek chairman Jason Cheng (程建中), who doubles as Pegatron’s vice chairman, said the casing company’s performance last year was “below industry levels,” but he plans to maintain a similar dividend policy and payout ratio to last year’s 48.2 percent.
That would translate into a cash dividend of NT$3.98 based on the firm’s earnings per share of NT$8.26 last year, compared with the cash dividend of NT$8 a year ago.
The proposal is pending the board of directors’ approval.
Citing the company’s revenue pattern, Cheng said the company estimates that revenue this quarter could fall as much as 30 percent from last quarter’s NT$10.29 billion due to the beginning of an annual slow season for consumer electronics products.
In an effort to improve the company’s profitability this year, Cheng said Casetek will only take orders that have higher margins and average selling prices.
Cheng said Casetek is stepping up measures to increase the number of its clients and products to offset the effects of the declining tablet industry, efforts he said will pay off in the second half of this year.
The company has secured orders from four smartphone clients and will gradually begin shipments from the end of next quarter, Cheng added.
The clients include one of the top five Chinese smartphone vendors that sells “tens of millions” of handsets per year, according to Casetek chief executive officer Gary Chuang (莊育志).
Stephen Garrett, a 27-year-old graduate student, always thought he would study in China, but first the country’s restrictive COVID-19 policies made it nearly impossible and now he has other concerns. The cost is one deterrent, but Garrett is more worried about restrictions on academic freedom and the personal risk of being stranded in China. He is not alone. Only about 700 American students are studying at Chinese universities, down from a peak of nearly 25,000 a decade ago, while there are nearly 300,000 Chinese students at US schools. Some young Americans are discouraged from investing their time in China by what they see
MAJOR DROP: CEO Tim Cook, who is visiting Hanoi, pledged the firm was committed to Vietnam after its smartphone shipments declined 9.6% annually in the first quarter Apple Inc yesterday said it would increase spending on suppliers in Vietnam, a key production hub, as CEO Tim Cook arrived in the country for a two-day visit. The iPhone maker announced the news in a statement on its Web site, but gave no details of how much it would spend or where the money would go. Cook is expected to meet programmers, content creators and students during his visit, online newspaper VnExpress reported. The visit comes as US President Joe Biden’s administration seeks to ramp up Vietnam’s role in the global tech supply chain to reduce the US’ dependence on China. Images on
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last