Shares of AU Optronics Corp (
The shares rose NT$3.40, or the 7 percent market limit, to NT$52.50 yesterday, the highest since the market close of NT$52.86 on April 17, 2002.
Shares of Chi Mei Optoelectronics Corp (
AU Optronics declined to comment on the report.
The company may report first-quarter net income of NT$7.7 billion, based on the mean estimate of three analysts surveyed by Thomson Financial. The highest estimate in the Thomson Financial poll was for a profit of NT$8.5 billion.
"The business cycle for this company hasn't yet peaked," said Eric Lin, an analyst with UBS Securities Ltd, who's forecast a NT$7.6 billion first quarter profit for AU Optronics.
The company's gross margin, or the percentage of sales after production costs, will rise to 28.4 percent in the first quarter from 28 percent in the fourth quarter, he said in a report published on Monday.
Yesterday was the second straight day the shares rose by more than 6.5 percent.
AU Optronics's earnings for this year will increase 57 percent from a year earlier on rising prices and higher output, a BNP Paribas Peregrine analyst, Frank Su (
It will post a NT$8 billion first-quarter profit, Su said.
Still, some investors and analysts said panel prices will fall. They are expected to decline in next month, ABN Amro Asset Management investor Pedro Tai said on Tuesday.
Tai counts shares in Taiwanese flat-panel makers among the more than US$200 million he manages in Taipei. The fall may be a "short-term dip," he said.
Prices of computer panels will drop by 15 percent this year compared with a drop of as much as 35 percent for TV panels, Lin said.
AU Optronics said it doesn't plan to increase the portion of its TV-panel output significantly until next year.
Max Cheng (
The company expects to give a full-year profit forecast by the end of April, she said. The annual shareholders' meeting will be on April 29.
AU Optronics, which is cutting costs at its newest factory faster than originally expected, will probably improve profit from the NT$178.9 million in the three-month period ended March 31 last year, the report said.
The US dollar was trading at NT$29.7 at 10am today on the Taipei Foreign Exchange, as the New Taiwan dollar gained NT$1.364 from the previous close last week. The NT dollar continued to rise today, after surging 3.07 percent on Friday. After opening at NT$30.91, the NT dollar gained more than NT$1 in just 15 minutes, briefly passing the NT$30 mark. Before the US Department of the Treasury's semi-annual currency report came out, expectations that the NT dollar would keep rising were already building. The NT dollar on Friday closed at NT$31.064, up by NT$0.953 — a 3.07 percent single-day gain. Today,
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