Ritek Inc. (錸德科技), Taiwan's second-best performing stock this year, said it won a two-year contract to supply computer discs to Britain's Traxdata Corp., adding at least NT$4 billion a year (US$126 million) to annual sales.
Ritek, which already supplies 35 percent of Europe's recordable computer discs, will ship 250 million discs a year during the next two years to Traxdata, one of Europe's largest computer products distributors.
``This contract manufacturing order marks a big step for us,'' said Jack Huang, a Ritek vice president. ``It will help us become even bigger in Europe, raising our share there to 45 percent.''
The Internet boom is driving global CD-ROM demand, expected to total to 2.1 billion discs this year. Only 700 million of the discs, which can store everything from computer data to music downloaded from the Internet, were shipped in 1998.
Ritek last month raised its full-year net profit target by 83 percent to NT$5.16 billion. Its sales forecast rose 55 percent to NT$14.0 billion.
CMC Magnetics Corp., the closest rival of Ritek, also lifted its net profit target by 89 percent to NT$7.15 billion for this year.
So far this year, Ritek shares have jumped 183 percent and CMC has risen 171 percent. Ritek fell 1.4 percent to NT$216 yesterday, while CMC dropped 2.2 percent NT$133.
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