Profits for electronics parts maker Lite-On Technology Corp (光寶科技) grew 16 percent annually in the first quarter of the year, driven mainly by high-end modules for dual camera lenses used in smartphones, the company reported yesterday.
The company’s net income of NT$1.98 billion (US$65.52 million) marks its highest quarterly result over the period in the past 13 years, Lite-On data showed, while earnings per share were NT$0.85 last quarter, compared with NT$0.74 a year earlier.
“The high-end camera module segment was the main contributor last quarter. Its revenue expanded by 20 percent from the same time a year ago,” Lite-On chief executive officer Warren Chen (陳廣中) told an investors’ conference in Taipei.
Higher shipments of its LED components and LED outdoor lighting products also boosted its earnings in the January-to-March period, Lite-On said.
Consolidated sales were NT$51.4 billion in the first quarter, up 3 percent year-on-year, Lite-On reported earlier this month, when it attributed the increase to stable market growth from the cloud computing, LED lighting and high-end camera module businesses.
However, the company yesterday said its operating margin contracted by 0.09 percentage points annually to 4 percent last quarter, while its gross margin dropped 0.22 percentage points to 13 percent, citing the negative effect of rising raw material costs that eroded earnings of its information technology business.
In addition, a supply shortage of NAND flash memory chips also delayed shipments of its storage products and affected the overall margin performance, the company said.
Chen said the continued component shortage and increasing prices of raw materials would keep adding pressure on Lite-On’s margin performance this quarter.
“On the bright side, as more clients adopt dual-camera features for their flagship smartphones, we forecast the top and bottom lines to climb further,” Chen said.
Lite-On’s camera clients are mainly Chinese smartphone vendors, such as Huawei Technologies Co (華為) and Oppo Mobile Telecommunications Co (歐珀移動), which both launched high-end smartphones with dual cameras this quarter.
In light of the growing demand for camera modules, the company plans to expand its production capacity in the second half of this year, Chen said, declining to disclose the range of the expansion as the investment amount is not yet finalized.
The expanded capacity would be used for smartphones and new applications, such as camera modules for 3D-sensing and 360-degree cameras, Chen said, adding that they could be used in wearable products, drones or for surveillance.
Lite-On shares have risen 8.23 percent since the beginning of the year, compared with the broader market’s 6.68 percent increase. The stock closed at NT$52.6 yesterday in Taipei trading.
BUSINESS UPDATE: The iPhone assembler said operations outlook is expected to show quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year growth for the second quarter Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday reported strong growth in sales last month, potentially raising expectations for iPhone sales while artificial intelligence (AI)-related business booms. The company, which assembles the majority of Apple Inc’s smartphones, reported a 19.03 percent rise in monthly sales to NT$510.9 billion (US$15.78 billion), from NT$429.22 billion in the same period last year. On a monthly basis, sales rose 14.16 percent, it said. The company in a statement said that last month’s revenue was a record-breaking April performance. Hon Hai, known also as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), assembles most iPhones, but the company is diversifying its business to
Apple Inc has been developing a homegrown chip to run artificial intelligence (AI) tools in data centers, although it is unclear if the semiconductor would ever be deployed, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. The effort would build on Apple’s previous efforts to make in-house chips, which run in its iPhones, Macs and other devices, according to the Journal, which cited unidentified people familiar with the matter. The server project is code-named ACDC (Apple Chips in Data Center) within the company, aiming to utilize Apple’s expertise in chip design for the company’s server infrastructure, the newspaper said. While this initiative has been
GlobalWafers Co (環球晶圓), the world’s No. 3 silicon wafer supplier, yesterday said that revenue would rise moderately in the second half of this year, driven primarily by robust demand for advanced wafers used in high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips, a key component of artificial intelligence (AI) technology. “The first quarter is the lowest point of this cycle. The second half will be better than the first for the whole semiconductor industry and for GlobalWafers,” chairwoman Doris Hsu (徐秀蘭) said during an online investors’ conference. “HBM would definitely be the key growth driver in the second half,” Hsu said. “That is our big hope
The consumer price index (CPI) last month eased to 1.95 percent, below the central bank’s 2 percent target, as food and entertainment cost increases decelerated, helped by stable egg prices, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday. The slowdown bucked predictions by policymakers and academics that inflationary pressures would build up following double-digit electricity rate hikes on April 1. “The latest CPI data came after the cost of eating out and rent grew moderately amid mixed international raw material prices,” DGBAS official Tsao Chih-hung (曹志弘) told a news conference in Taipei. The central bank in March raised interest rates by