Chunghwa Picture Tubes Ltd (中華映管), the nation’s No. 3 LCD panel maker, expects shipments to grow more than 10 percent next quarter as customers are restocking ahead of the seasonal high in the second half of the year, a company executive said yesterday.
The Taoyuan-based company’s positive outlook largely matches the broad optimism shared by players in the LCD industry including bigger rival AU Optronics Corp (友達光電).
“The third quarter will be a better period than the second quarter. Customer inventory has been dropping since April and May. This is a good signal,” company president Lin Sheng-chang (林盛昌) said.
Inventory replenishing and back-to-school demand will be the main drivers for shipments, Lin said.
“The growth will be 10 percent quarter-over-quarter, at least,” he said.
Even now, Chunghwa Picture “is unable to satisfy customer demand” after restarting a 4.5-generation production line in April and expanding the capacity of a 6G production line 22 percent to 110,000 units a month, Lin said.
Helped by a strong rebound in demand and efforts to optimize product lineup, Lin said the company aimed to book profits again this month.
The company posted losses over the past seven quarters.
To reduce pricing volatility, Chunghwa Picture has been trying to move into value-added, niche markets such as touch panels, 3D panels, high-quality panels used in car dashboards and LCD panels for e-readers.
The company said it has shipped 7-inch LCD panels for a US bookseller’s own-brand e-readers. It also expects touch panel shipments to first-tier- smartphone makers to double to 2 million units a month in the second half of this year, from 1 million in the first half.
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