Advanced Semiconductor Engineering Inc (ASE, 日月光半導體), the world’s largest chip tester and packager, yesterday posted net profit for last quarter of NT$7.85 billion (US$259.1 million), an 82 percent increase from the same period last year, as a massive asset disposal gain offset seasonal weakness.
The Kaohsiung-based company booked income of NT$5.6 billion by selling a real-estate holding in China, providing a boost to net profit last quarter from NT$4.3 billion in the second quarter last year.
However, operating income shrank 11 percent year-on-year to NT$5.22 billion last quarter from NT$5.89 billion in 2015, an ASE financial statement showed.
The firm attributed the contraction to annual appreciation of 6.8 percent of the New Taiwan dollar against the US dollar last quarter.
ASE chief operating officer Tien Wu (吳田玉) said the company “has performed above” expectations, overcoming an unfavorable industrial environment, including supply chain inventory correction and slowdowns in some segments in the second quarter.
On a quarterly basis, ASE’s operating income was little changed from NT$5.23 billion.
Customer orders should improve further this quarter, Wu said.
“Our observation is, based on clients’ input, that the inventory status in the second half will be in check,” he said. “It is purely demand-driven.”
ASE is seeing healthy demand in the industrial and automotive segments, Wu said, adding that a new product cycle in the wireless segment would bring strong growth to the company in the second half.
“We maintain the expectation of quarter-on-quarter growth in the second half,” he said.
Revenue from its core chip testing and packaging business this quarter is expected to be little changed from NT$43 billion in the third quarter of last year, ASE said, implying that the company might report 10 percent quarterly growth in revenue this quarter from NT$39 billion last quarter.
The quarterly growth is “decent,” given that the company is to see subsiding demand from the communications segment because of a delay in new product launches by clients, an analyst from a foreign investment consultancy who requested anonymity said yesterday.
Gross margin for the chip testing and packaging business is expected to climb from 23.1 percent last quarter to 24.8 percent this quarter, thanks to a steady NT dollar and more efficient factory usage, ASE said.
Chip packaging equipment utilization is to rise from 75 percent to 80 percent, while chip testing equipment utilization is to climb from 70 percent to as high as 80 percent, it said.
Separately, ASE said it has no plans to invest any new factories in the US in the short term, one day after Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) announced that it is to invest US$10 billion to build a flat-panel plant in Wisconsin.
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