Acer Inc, the world’s third-largest PC vendor, yesterday reported that its first-quarter net income fell 47.9 percent to NT$2.95 billion (US$97.5 million) from NT$5.66 billion a year earlier when earnings were boosted by investment income.
Earnings per share (EPS) fell to NT$1.25 in the first quarter, from NT$2.4 a year ago. Gross margin climbed to 10.6 percent last quarter, from 9.5 percent a year ago. Its operating profit climbed 41 percent to NT$2.74 billion.
“Acer will strive to maintain its gross margin at around 10 percent this year,” Acer chief financial officer Howard Chan (詹浩) told an investor conference yesterday.
Given Acer’s EPS of NT$5.48 per share last year, the company’s board of directors yesterday approved a proposal to distribute a cash dividend of NT$3.60 and a stock dividend of 1.5 percent per share, the company said in a statement.
Acer also said yesterday that the synergy from its merger of local mobile device maker E-ten Information System Co (倚天) on March 3 would have a positive impact on its sales volume and efforts to lower material costs.
“Acer will be able to double E-ten’s original shipment target next year, and lower material costs by between 4 percent and 5 percent based on Acer’s scale and relationship with key component suppliers,” Acer chairman and CEO Wang Jeng-tang (王振堂) said yesterday.
The company said it was upbeat about the smart handheld device market, as it is expected to generate more than US$200 billion in the future, which is about the size of today’s PC market. Moreover, Acer expects to see laptops and smart handheld devices converging in the next few years.
“Acer wants to become a major player in each market [notebook PCs and smart handheld devices],” Wang said.
The company said yesterday that its first low-cost laptops, powered by Intel Corp’s new Atom processors, will be released as planned at the Computex show in June.
Acer also adjusted its shipment target from 25 million units to between 25 million and 30 million units. Its overall PC shipment is likely to grow between 30 percent and 35 percent this year from a year ago, Wang said.
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