E-paper display supplier E Ink Holdings Inc (元太科技) yesterday forecast that revenue this quarter would be little changed from a year earlier — revenue was NT$3.47 billion during the final quarter last year — as robust demand for e-paper displays for electronic shelf labels and new e-notebooks would offset its exit from the LCD business.
However, the forecast represents a decline in revenue of about 28 percent this quarter from last quarter’s NT$4.79 billion (US$158.83 million).
“The company is seeing the slow demand of seasonal effect in the fourth quarter. As evidenced in most fourth quarters, shipments come down after the demand peak in the third quarter,” E Ink spokesman Patrick Chang (張元培) told a teleconference with investors.
“We expect revenue this quarter to reach a level similar to that of the fourth quarter last year,” he said.
However, improvements made to the company’s product portfolio after scrapping the low-margin LCD panel business in the second quarter this year would result in better profitability ahead, Chang said.
In addition, the company expects to see a substantial increase in the shipment of e-paper displays for electronic shelf labels during the second half of this year, as the replacement of traditional paper labels by large-scale retailers gains traction, he said, adding that “China, in particular, is showing strong growth momentum.”
Chinese retailers, such as a new supermarket funded by Alibaba Group Holding Ltd (阿里巴巴), are joining their peers in the US and Europe in adopting electronic shelf labels, E Ink said.
Electronic shelf labels will make up between 15 percent and 20 percent of E Ink’s revenue this year, making them the company’s second-biggest source of revenue, the company projected in August.
E Ink’s latest product diversification efforts saw a positive market increase in its e-paper displays for e-notebooks last quarter, with expectations that the momentum will last through this quarter, the company said.
E-paper displays that are used in e-readers and e-notebooks accounted for 70 percent of the company’s overall revenue last quarter, it said.
E Ink’s product diversification efforts have begun to bear fruit, with gross margin climbing to 43.5 percent last quarter, from 40.1 percent in the second quarter and 38.1 percent in the third quarter last year.
Net profit last quarter soared nearly 130 percent to NT$1.17 billion, hitting the highest level in about 23 quarters, compared with NT$509 million in the same period last year, a filing with the Taiwan Stock Exchange earlier this month showed.
That represented a quarterly growth of 46.9 percent from NT$798 million.
However, uncertainty over royalty income casts a shadow over the company’s long-term profit performance, as the increasing adoption of high-definition organic LED (OLED) panels could reduce demand for high-resolution fringe field switching (FFS) LCD technology developed by Hydis Technologies Co.
FFS was first adopted by Apple Inc about 10 years ago when OLED technology was still being developed.
E Ink expects to book stable royalty income this year, compared with last year’s NT$2.25 billion.
CHIP RACE: Three years of overbroad export controls drove foreign competitors to pursue their own AI chips, and ‘cost US taxpayers billions of dollars,’ Nvidia said China has figured out the US strategy for allowing it to buy Nvidia Corp’s H200s and is rejecting the artificial intelligence (AI) chip in favor of domestically developed semiconductors, White House AI adviser David Sacks said, citing news reports. US President Donald Trump on Monday said that he would allow shipments of Nvidia’s H200 chips to China, part of an administration effort backed by Sacks to challenge Chinese tech champions such as Huawei Technologies Co (華為) by bringing US competition to their home market. On Friday, Sacks signaled that he was uncertain about whether that approach would work. “They’re rejecting our chips,” Sacks
NATIONAL SECURITY: Intel’s testing of ACM tools despite US government control ‘highlights egregious gaps in US technology protection policies,’ a former official said Chipmaker Intel Corp has tested chipmaking tools this year from a toolmaker with deep roots in China and two overseas units that were targeted by US sanctions, according to two sources with direct knowledge of the matter. Intel, which fended off calls for its CEO’s resignation from US President Donald Trump in August over his alleged ties to China, got the tools from ACM Research Inc, a Fremont, California-based producer of chipmaking equipment. Two of ACM’s units, based in Shanghai and South Korea, were among a number of firms barred last year from receiving US technology over claims they have
It is challenging to build infrastructure in much of Europe. Constrained budgets and polarized politics tend to undermine long-term projects, forcing officials to react to emergencies rather than plan for the future. Not in Austria. Today, the country is to officially open its Koralmbahn tunnel, the 5.9 billion euro (US$6.9 billion) centerpiece of a groundbreaking new railway that will eventually run from Poland’s Baltic coast to the Adriatic Sea, transforming travel within Austria and positioning the Alpine nation at the forefront of logistics in Europe. “It is Austria’s biggest socio-economic experiment in over a century,” said Eric Kirschner, an economist at Graz-based Joanneum
BUBBLE? Only a handful of companies are seeing rapid revenue growth and higher valuations, and it is not enough to call the AI trend a transformation, an analyst said Artificial intelligence (AI) is entering a more challenging phase next year as companies move beyond experimentation and begin demanding clear financial returns from a technology that has delivered big gains to only a small group of early adopters, PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) Taiwan said yesterday. Most organizations have been able to justify AI investments through cost recovery or modest efficiency gains, but few have achieved meaningful revenue growth or long-term competitive advantage, the consultancy said in its 2026 AI Business Predictions report. This growing performance gap is forcing executives to reconsider how AI is deployed across their organizations, it said. “Many companies
RSS