E Ink Holdings Inc (元太科技), the world’s No. 1 supplier of e-paper displays, yesterday said that revenue this year would be little changed from last year’s NT$15.2 billion (US$494 million), as growing uptake of electronic shelf labels and e-notebooks would offset a slump in e-reader demand.
E-reader customers this year are adjusting their product portfolios to changing demand, but the rough transition is cutting demand for e-paper displays, the Hsinchu-based company said.
E Ink supplies e-paper displays for Amazon.com Inc’s and Rakuten Kobo Inc’s e-readers. E-paper displays used in e-readers and e-notebooks made up 70 percent of E Ink’s total revenue in the first half of this year.
“We still believe e-readers are a business with consistent growth. This year is an exception. Next year, the e-reader market will resume high-speed growth as experienced over the past few years,” E Ink president Johnson Lee (李政昊) said at an investors’ conference.
To reach its revenue goal, E Ink has to achieve a combined revenue of NT$8.69 billion in the third and fourth quarters, after making NT$6.51 billion in the first half of the year, and the company counts on rapidly growing demand for its electronic shelf labels and e-notebooks to support revenue growth.
“The use of electronic shelf labels is spreading to [major] retailers from grocery stores,” Lee said.
For the first time, “the consumption of e-paper displays will surpass that of e-readers this year in square-meter terms,” Lee said.
“We are optimistic about the electronic shelf labels’ growth rate,” Lee said, declining to answer an analyst’s question about the 20 to 30 percent annual growth previously forecast by E Ink.
China sales would see robust growth this year, despite slower store expansion by an Alibaba Group Holding Ltd (阿里巴巴)-funded Chinese supermarket chain, E Ink said.
Chinese retailers last year followed their peers in the US and Europe in adopting electronic shelf labels, E Ink said.
E-paper displays used in electronic shelf labels made up about 17 percent of the company’s total revenue last year.
The company also expects to see annual growth in shipments of e-notebooks in China, as some local governments have restricted schools from using tablets out of concern for children’s eyesight.
With new colored e-paper displays to be available by the end of this year, E Ink said it expects e-notebooks to be a new growth driver next year.
The company expects gross margin to rebound in the second half of this year, bringing its full-year gross margin close to last year’s 41.32 percent, it said.
Royalty income, an important contributor to the firm’s profits, this year would be flat from last year’s NT$2.6 billion, E Ink said.
RECORD BUDGET: TSMC does plan to raise its proposed capital expenditure a lot, and could benefit if Intel outsources more of its production to foundries, analysts said Intel Corp’s earnings conference call on Thursday is expected to clarify the US semiconductor giant’s outsourcing production plans, which would be crucial regarding Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC, 台積電) performance, analysts said. “TSMC stands to benefit if Intel outsources more of its fabrication to foundries,” SinoPac Securities Investment Service Corp (永豐投顧) analysts said in a note on Friday. Yuanta Securities Investment Consulting Co (元大投顧) was more cautious, saying that Intel’s contribution initially would be limited, but its outsourcing plans would still highlight TSMC’s leadership in technology, it added. “Intel will continue to manufacture server or high-end central processing units [CPUs], which have higher
MediaTek Inc (聯發科) yesterday announced it would give incentive bonuses totaling NT$1.7 billion (US$59.7 million) to its employees and those at the firm’s major subsidiaries, after the smartphone chip supplier’s revenue hit US$10 billion last year. This is the biggest incentive bonus the Hsinchu-based handset chip designer has ever distributed in its 23-year history. About 17,000 full-time employees of MediaTek and five of its subsidiaries, including Richtek Technology Corp (立錡科技) and Airoha Technology Corp (絡達科技), would receive a “red envelope” of NT$100,000 each, the company said. “Surpassing US$10 billion is just the beginning. We will continue to [grow] on this basis,” MediaTek
TO SPUR REVENUE: The contract chipmaker expects its profit to grow 15 percent this year, outpacing the foundry industry’s projected advance of about 10 percent Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday raised its projected capital spending for this year by 62 percent, a new high, in an attempt to satisfy customer demand for advanced technologies in the production of central processing units, high-performance-computing (HPC) devices and 5G applications. After investing US$17.24 billion last year, TSMC this year plans to spend US$25 billion to US$28 billion on manufacturing equipment and new facilities, including a fab in the US. About 80 percent of the budget would be allocated for developing advanced technologies including 3, 5 and 7-nanometer technologies, the company said. The larger-than-expected capital spending prompted speculation
Norway’s oil and gas reserves have made it one of the world’s wealthiest countries, but its dreams for deep-sea discovery now center on something different. This time, Oslo is looking for a leading role in mining copper, zinc and other metals found on the seabed and in hot demand in green technologies. The country could license companies for deep-sea mining as early as 2023, the Norwegian Ministry of Petroleum and Energy said, potentially placing it among the first countries to harvest seabed metals for electric vehicle batteries, wind turbines and solar farms. However, that could also place it on the front line of
RSS