Taiwanese multilayer ceramic capacitor (MLCC) manufacturers are recovering faster than anticipated, backed by the release of 5G-enabled smartphones in China and robust sales of Apple Inc’s iPhone 11 series, analysts said last week.
Along with Taiwanese firms, such as Yageo Corp (國巨) and Walsin Technology Corp (華新科技), global players like Murata Manufacturing Co Ltd in Japan and Samsung Electro-Mechanics Co Ltd in South Korea are also expected to benefit from a full-fledged industry recovery from the first half of next year, analysts said.
“The MLCC industry has been recovering rapidly as of late, helped by brisk sales of new iPhone models and rising 5G smartphone sales in China,” Seoul-based NH Investment & Securities Co analyst Kyuha Lee said in a note on Thursday. “We note that Taiwanese MLCC players, which are particularly sensitive to shifts in industry conditions due to their high supply portions, around 50 percent on average, to distributors, have confirmed that inventory levels are declining and lead times are expanding.”
“In terms of prices, Taiwanese MLCC manufacturers should see average selling price [ASP] declines of about 5 percent in Q4 of 2019 — an indication that future ASP declines should narrow,” Lee said.
The supply-demand conditions appear tight for 0201-size MLCC items used in smartphone products, with lead time extending to about three months, Yageo said recently.
The company estimated its inventory turnover would likely drop to below 60 days this quarter, compared with the 70 days it expected earlier.
“Considering that typical industry lead time is roughly four to six weeks, and that lead time in 2018, a period of tight supply, was three to six months, we view the currently expanded lead time as a sign of faster-than-expected MLCC business recovery,” Lee said.
Yageo on Friday reported consolidated revenue of NT$3.52 billion (US$115.4 million) for last month, up 9.2 percent from the previous month mainly on increased end-demand, the company said in a regulatory filing.
On an annual basis, revenue decreased by 34.5 percent.
In the first 11 months of this year, aggregate revenue was NT$38.03 billion, a decrease of 47.6 percent from the same period last year.
Looking ahead, Yageo said it is cautiously optimistic about its business performance and expects a continued decline in its inventory turnover days for finished goods due to recovering demand.
“However, due to the difficulty in recruiting enough workers at production facilities, the company could not raise its utilization rate to a large extent in the near term,” the company said, adding that the business environment remains challenging in light of US-China trade frictions.
Walsin also reported improved revenue for last month, up 7.43 percent from a month earlier to NT$2.26 billion, although the figure remained 43.95 percent less than a year earlier.
“With channel destocking coming to an end and unit prices stabilizing, customers in the distribution channel, cellphone manufacturers and consumer electronic segments are pulling in stock to get ready for the Lunar New Year holidays,” Walsin said in a statement on Friday.
From January to last month, aggregate revenue totaled NT$27.79 billion, down 39.95 percent from NT$44.79 billion in the same period last year, the company said.
SECOND-RATE: Models distilled from US products do not perform the same as the original and undo measures that ensure the systems are neutral, the US’ cable said The US Department of State has ordered a global push to bring attention to what it said are widespread efforts by Chinese companies, including artificial intelligence (AI) start-up DeepSeek (深度求索), to steal intellectual property from US AI labs, according to a diplomatic cable. The cable, dated Friday and sent to diplomatic and consular posts around the world, instructs diplomatic staff to speak to their foreign counterparts about “concerns over adversaries’ extraction and distillation of US AI models.” Distillation is the process of training smaller AI models using output from larger, more expensive ones to lower the costs of training a powerful new
Micron Technology Inc is a driving force pushing the US Congress to pass legislation that would put new export restrictions on equipment its Chinese competitors use to make their chips, according to people familiar with the matter. A US House of Representatives panel yesterday was to vote on the “MATCH Act,” a bill designed to close gaps in restrictions on chipmaking equipment. It would also pressure foreign companies that sell equipment to Chinese chipmaking facilities to align with export curbs on US companies like Lam Research Corp and Applied Materials Inc. The bill targets facilities operated by China’s ChangXin Memory Technologies Inc
Singapore-based ride-hailing and delivery giant Grab Holdings’ planned acquisition of Foodpanda’s Taiwan operations has yet to enter the formal review stage, as regulators await supplementary documents, the Fair Trade Commission (FTC) said yesterday. Acting FTC Chairman Chen Chih-min (陳志民) told the legislature’s Economics Committee that although Grab submitted its application on March 27, the case has not been officially accepted because required materials remain incomplete. Once the filing is finalized, the FTC would launch a formal probe into the deal, focusing on issues such as cross-shareholding and potential restrictions on market competition, Chen told lawmakers. Grab last month announced that it would acquire
The artificial intelligence (AI) boom has triggered a seismic reshuffling of global equity markets, with Taiwan and South Korea muscling past European nations one by one. With its stock market now valued at nearly US$4.3 trillion, Taiwan surpassed the UK, Europe’s biggest market, earlier this month, data compiled by Bloomberg showed. South Korea is about US$140 billion away from doing the same. The tech-heavy Asian markets have shot past Germany and France in the past seven months. The shift is largely down to massive gains in shares of three companies that provide essential hardware for AI: Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電),
RSS