Taipei-based Inventec Corp (英業達) expects increased demand for its PCs, servers, smart devices and solar power products this quarter after the contract electronics manufacturer weathered the slow season during the first three months of the year.
The company yesterday forecast a 5 percent quarter-on-quarter growth in shipments across its four main product categories this quarter, it told a teleconference.
Inventec president Maurice Wu (巫永財) said that smartphone shipments this quarter would be boosted after a number of Chinese brands had tapped the company as a supplier since the beginning of the year.
AUTOMATION
To address the high labor costs at its Shanghai-based operations, the company has also initiated organizational restructuring efforts, and plans to deploy smart manufacturing and automation upgrades to further improve efficiency, Wu said.
Although the first quarter saw an across-the-board sequential decline, the company reported that net income during the period rose 87 percent to NT$1.27 billion (US$42.55 million) when compared with a year earlier.
Earnings per share were NT$0.35.
Sales in the first three months fell 21 percent quarter-on-quarter, but gained 5 percent year-on-year to NT$104.8 billion, company data showed.
MARGIN
Gross margin during the period came in at 5.1 percent, up 0.1 percentage points quarter-on-quarter, but down 0.5 percentage points year-on-year.
Operating margin fell by 0.4 percentage points quarter-on-quarter and 0.2 percentage points year-on-year to 1.4 percent, it said.
As the New Taiwan dollar appreciated at a slower pace compared with the same period last year, the company posted non-operating income of NT$297 million, which included NT$88 million in foreign-exchange gains on top of its investment gains.
That compared with non-operating losses of NT$1.7 billion the previous quarter and NT$993 million the previous year, it said.
FEWER SMART DEVICES
In the first quarter, sales contribution from PCs and servers rose 5 percent quarter-on-quarter to 82 percent of total sales, while sales of smart devices weakened by 4 percentage points to 16 percent.
Solar power products shed 1 percentage point to 2 percent during the slow season, it said.
Inventec shares yesterday rose 0.43 percent to close at NT$23.15 in Taipei trading, outperforming the TAIEX, which fell 0.71 percent.
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