Chunghwa Picture Tubes Ltd (中華映管), the nation’s third-largest flat-panel maker, said yesterday its second-quarter loss narrowed by 12 percent from the first quarter because of rising market demand and rising panel prices.
“However, the quarterly improvement lagged behind our local peers because of the company’s conservative outlook for the quarter and the shortage of key raw materials,” company president Kay Chiu (邱創儀) told investors at a teleconference.
Chunghwa Picture’s second-quarter revenue rebounded by a smaller-than-expected 21.4 percent from the first quarter because a shortage of integrated circuits and glass for liquid-crystal displays (LCD) prevented the company from producing enough panels, chief financial officer James Wu (巫俊毅) said.
Responding to analysts’ questions, the company said it expected the glass shortage to show “obvious improvement next month.” The company experienced a glass shortfall of roughly 20 percent in June, Wu said.
In the April-June period, the company’s loss was NT$9.85 billion (US$300 million), or NT$1.04 per share, compared with a loss of NT$11.2 billion in the first quarter and a profit of NT$1.08 billion a year earlier, according to a company statement.
Quarterly revenue rose to NT$11.9 billion from NT$7.9 billion in the first quarter, but the figure was still 66.2 percent lower than the NT$35.2 billion from a year earlier, the statement showed.
Among local rivals, Chunghwa Picture lost the most in the second quarter. AU Optronics Corp (友達光電), the third-largest flat-panel maker in the world, posted a quarterly loss of NT$6.6 billion on July 23, while Chi Mei Optoelectronics Corp (奇美電子), the nation’s second-largest panel maker, said on July 30 its loss was NT$8.84 billion for the quarter.
But Chiu said the company expected business to “improve substantially in the third quarter” in terms of both revenue and shipments.
Wu was also optimistic, saying that the company’s consolidated sales reached a new high last month, mainly driven by strong demand from China.
He added that sales last month had already increased 33.1 percent to NT$5.96 billion from June and only represented a decline of 24.8 percent from a year ago.
Chunghwa Picture yesterday declined to give its business guidance on earnings and gross margins for the current quarter or the second half of the year, citing a silent period following the company’s sale of as many as 100 million new global depository receipts (GDR).
“We completed the GDR offering late last month, raising about US$295 million in total,” Wu said.
The company reiterated its plan to complete a private placement deal with Compal Electronics Inc (仁寶) and Tatung Group (大同集團) in the third quarter, raising an amount of less than NT$10 billion to buy materials and pay debt, he said.
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