Passive components manufacturer Yageo Corp (國巨) expects to see its revenue grow by 3.62 percent this year, benefiting from the company’s latest price hike on chip resistor products, First Capital Management Inc (第一金投顧) said on Thursday.
The company’s price increases of 15 to 20 percent on certain chip resistor products, announced on Wednesday, could increase revenue by NT$1.17 billion (US$39.53 million), while boosting its gross margin by between 3 and 4 percentage points and lifting its earnings per share by NT$0.9, First Capital said in a statement.
Yageo is one of the world’s major suppliers of resistors — an electronic component used to resist or reduce the amount of current flowing in an electronic circuit — controlling one-third of the global market share, with rivals including Taiwan’s Walsin Technology Corp (華新科) and Ralec Electronic Corp (旺詮), as well as Japan’s Rohm Co Ltd and KOA Corp, Taishin Securities Investment Advisory Co (台新投顧) said in a separate statement on Thursday.
Yageo reported total revenue of NT$32.26 billion last year, up 8.91 percent from 2016, as the company raised prices for its multilayer ceramic capacitor (MLCC) products four times throughout the year amid a supply crunch.
Chip resistor sales contributed NT$14.2 billion to Yageo last year, accounting for about 44 percent of its total revenue, with MLCCs making up 50 percent, Taishin said.
Viking Tech Corp (光頡科技), a supplier of resistors and inductors, also on Thursday announced that it would raise prices for several chip resistors by 10 percent, due to higher prices for raw materials such as packaging material, paste, electroplating material and ceramic substrate.
Yageo’s and Viking Tech’s price hikes came after Ralec announced on Jan. 2 that it would raise prices for some chip resistor products by up to 15 percent for greater China distributors and agents.
The shortage in chip resistor supplies began in the third quarter of last year and the situation is expected to persist into the first half of this year, as major manufacturers in Japan are moving to focus on high-end products amid a trend toward automotive electronics, analysts said, adding that increases in resistor supplies at Taiwanese suppliers have been limited, while raw material and labor costs continue to rise and the New Taiwan dollar struggles against the US dollar, analysts said.
Yageo’s stock price closed 2.98 percent lower at NT$375 in Taipei trading on Friday.
Over the past 12 months, the stock has surged more than 466 percent, compared with the main bourse’s 15.7 percent rise over the same period, Taiwan Stock Exchange data showed.
When Lika Megreladze was a child, life in her native western Georgian region of Guria revolved around tea. Her mother worked for decades as a scientist at the Soviet Union’s Institute of Tea and Subtropical Crops in the village of Anaseuli, Georgia, perfecting cultivation methods for a Georgian tea industry that supplied the bulk of the vast communist state’s brews. “When I was a child, this was only my mum’s workplace. Only later I realized that it was something big,” she said. Now, the institute lies abandoned. Yellowed papers are strewn around its decaying corridors, and a statue of Soviet founder Vladimir Lenin
UNIFYING OPPOSITION: Numerous companies have registered complaints over the potential levies, bringing together rival automakers in voicing their reservations US President Donald Trump is readying plans for industry-specific tariffs to kick in alongside his country-by-country duties in two weeks, ramping up his push to reshape the US’ standing in the global trading system by penalizing purchases from abroad. Administration officials could release details of Trump’s planned 50 percent duty on copper in the days before they are set to take effect on Friday next week, a person familiar with the matter said. That is the same date Trump’s “reciprocal” levies on products from more than 100 nations are slated to begin. Trump on Tuesday said that he is likely to impose tariffs
HELPING HAND: Approving the sale of H20s could give China the edge it needs to capture market share and become the global standard, a US representative said The US President Donald Trump administration’s decision allowing Nvidia Corp to resume shipments of its H20 artificial intelligence (AI) chips to China risks bolstering Beijing’s military capabilities and expanding its capacity to compete with the US, the head of the US House Select Committee on Strategic Competition Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party said. “The H20, which is a cost-effective and powerful AI inference chip, far surpasses China’s indigenous capability and would therefore provide a substantial increase to China’s AI development,” committee chairman John Moolenaar, a Michigan Republican, said on Friday in a letter to US Secretary of
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC, 台積電) market value closed above US$1 trillion for the first time in Taipei last week, with a raised sales forecast driven by robust artificial intelligence (AI) demand. TSMC saw its Taiwanese shares climb to a record high on Friday, a near 50 percent rise from an April low. That has made it the first Asian stock worth more than US$1 trillion, since PetroChina Co (中國石油天然氣) briefly reached the milestone in 2007. As investors turned calm after their aggressive buying on Friday, amid optimism over the chipmaker’s business outlook, TSMC lost 0.43 percent to close at NT$1,150