Machinery maker Hiwin Technologies Co (上銀科技) has seen rising orders from South Korea amid a Japan-South Korea trade spat, which would further lift the company’s automation equipment business, a company official said yesterday.
“In a bid to seek a second supplier, South Korean semiconductor companies have turned to us and placed orders for automation equipment, such as precision motion components and positioning systems, which would boost sales next month at the earliest,” Hiwin Group (上銀集團) chairman Eric Chuo (卓永財) told an investors’ conference in Taipei.
Increasing orders from South Korea would also boost the company’s linear guideway business, but the company expects the machine tools market to “remain sluggish in the second half of this year, as the US-China trade dispute has negatively affected customers’ capacity expansion plans,” he said.
Photo: Kwan Shin-han, Taipei Times
As the competition in the machine tools market continues to increase, the company plans to introduce new products, such as smart ball screws, alternating current servo motors, torque motors and medical equipment, in the second half of the year, Hiwin Technologies chairman Chuo Wen-heng (卓文恒) said.
The company said that sales this quarter would not be worse than last quarter and forecast that next year’s sales would be better than those of this year, due to potential contributions from new production lines for a joint venture in China, as well as new orders for robots and medical equipment.
The firm also said that it would start expansion projects at its plants in the Chiayi Dapumei Precision Machinery Park (嘉義大埔美精密機械園區) later this year to increase output.
Hiwin Technologies reported that net profit plunged 48 percent annually to NT$818 million (US$25.98 million) in the second quarter, with earnings per share falling from NT$5.42 to NT$2.72.
Gross margin declined 5.2 percentage points to 36.1 percent, company data showed.
Cumulative revenue in the first seven months of the year fell 22.72 percent year-on-year to NT$13.25 billion, the company said.
Separately, Hiwin Mikrosystem Corp (大銀微系統), which is scheduled to be listed on the Taiwan Stock Exchange next month, reported that revenue in the first half of the year dipped 26.18 percent year-on-year to NT$1.08 billion due to lower demand for machine tools and automation components amid the US-China trade dispute.
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