Catcher Technology Co (可成), the nation’s leading supplier of light-metal casings and enclosures for mobile devices, yesterday said that revenue last month surged 39 percent quarterly and 3.6 percent annually to NT$12.84 billion (US$417.28 million).
The strong showing, which marked a record high in monthly revenue, coincided with the launch of Apple Inc’s iPhone XR, the most affordable handset in the US tech giant’s smartphone lineup this year.
Catcher supplies casings for iPhones, as well as for Apple MacBooks and iPads.
Cumulative revenue in the first 10 months of this year rose 8.5 percent annually to NT$79.1 billion, Catcher said.
The company released its financial results for last quarter, which saw net income drop 39.4 percent quarterly and 11.2 percent annually NT$6.56 billion.
Earnings per share were NT$8.52 last quarter, compared with NT$14.06 in the previous quarter and NT$9.59 a year earlier, the Tainan-based company said.
Net income in the period dipped due to higher taxes and significantly lower foreign-exchange gains, it said, adding that non-operating income dropped from NT$8.48 billion at the end of June to NT$2.93 billion at the end of September.
Revenue last quarter rose 20.9 percent quarterly to NT$25.09 billion, but fell 8.5 percent annually, as product launches took place later in the year, the company said.
Gross profit last quarter rose 21.3 percent from the previous quarter to NT$10.64 billion, but fell 8.9 percent from a year earlier, it said, adding that gross margin was 42.4 percent.
Operating profits were NT$8.29 billion, up 23.3 percent from the previous quarter, but 8.9 percent lower than a year earlier, the company said.
Operating margin was 33 percent, it added.
Aggregate net income in the first nine months rose 55.1 percent annually to NT$21.05 billion, with cumulative revenues gaining 9.5 percent to NT$66.25 billion, boosted by rising demand and an improved product mix, the company said.
While it remains to be seen if Apple’s new products will stir up significant interest and boost shipments for its suppliers, the iPhone XR and the new MacBook Air are likely to boost Catcher’s sales this quarter to the year’s highest, Jih Sun Securities Investment Consulting Co (日盛投顧) analyst Wayne Chen (陳有裕) said in a report on Wednesday.
Catcher shares yesterday fell 3.17 percent in Taipei trading to close at NT$290 ahead of the company’s release of its financial results.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
MAJOR BENEFICIARY: The company benefits from TSMC’s advanced packaging scarcity, given robust demand for Nvidia AI chips, analysts said ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it is raising its equipment capital expenditure budget by 10 percent this year to expand leading-edge and advanced packing and testing capacity amid strong artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing chip demand. This is on top of the 40 to 50 percent annual increase in its capital spending budget to more than the US$1.7 billion to announced in February. About half of the equipment capital expenditure would be spent on leading-edge and advanced packaging and testing technology, the company said. ASE is considered by analysts