Buoyed by strong PC sales worldwide and its tight grip on the chipset market, VIA Technologies (
The company's new estimate puts 2000 revenue at around NT$30 billion up from NT$21 billion, with earnings before interest and tax being revised up 48 percent to NT$5.5 billion.
"We've actually know for over a quarter that we would grossly exceed our original estimate," said VIA spokesman Shane Dennison.
The company attributed the better-than-expected results to strong demand for its PC-133 chipsets, which are used to support Intel processors, as well as the strong sales of its K-series AMD-based chipsets.
"Chipset sales have been phenomenal this year," Dennison noted.
While the announcement has been good news for investors, it has come as little surprise to analysts.
"This was really everybody's expectation," said Andrew Teng, semiconductor analyst at Taiwan International Securities.
"We know their chipsets are getting market share from Intel because Intel has not done a good job in the chipset market," he said.
According to Teng, one of Intel's biggest weaknesses, and VIA's strengths, has been the cost of the Intel A15 integrated chipset.
Teng said many local motherboard makers prefer to use VIA's chipsets with Intel processors because of the high cost of the A15 chipset.
Chipsets are used to join a system's processing chip to other components such as memory and graphic chips. Since chipsets themselves are not sold to the public, but are bought by motherboard makers, it's crucial that chipset makers meet the demands of motherboard makers. In addition to it's lead over Intel, VIA has benefited from strong demand for AMD processors thanks to its K-series chipsets which support AMD's Athlon and Duron processors.
"We're riding on AMD's coat tails, any success that AMD enjoys, we tag along for the ride," Dennison admitted.
Teng noted that AMD processors have managed to grab significant market share from Intel this year, with VIA being the main beneficiary.
"All the news we hear right now is very good for VIA, so we think VIA has very good profitability," Teng said.
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